


Evening Falls So Hard

by Allecto



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Barnes Siblings - Freeform, Cunnilingus, F/M, Female Bucky Barnes, Non-Graphic Violence, Pegging, Period-Typical Racism, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:27:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2232372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allecto/pseuds/Allecto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I could’a got him,” Steve says, wiping at his pants, but he also looks at her like she’s special, ‘stead of plain old Bucky Barnes with a missing tooth and boys’ pants and two annoying little brothers.</p><p>“Sure you could,” Bucky tells him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_”Heck, Steve, sometimes it feels like we’ve been best friends_ forever _”_  
-Margaret O’Brien as Young Bucky  
The Captain’s Bride _, 1947_

“Boys will be boys,” Bucky’s mommy tells her, but her daddy says he didn’t name her after a president so she could get shoved around, says nobody has the right to pull her pigtails if she doesn’t want him to, and she better not want it for years. He teaches her how to throw a punch, just like he learned in the War, and he teaches her to kick and to bite and at six she’s already old enough to resent being saddled with a stupid name like Jamesina Buchanan, but that doesn’t mean Tommy Miller has the right to tease her about it.

Her daddy says nobody has the right to tease her, and so does Steve Rogers, the new kid who moved to the neighborhood two weeks ago, after his daddy died from rotten lungs. Tommy’s a lot bigger than Steve, and a lot meaner, but that doesn’t stop Steve from punching him when Tommy pulls her braids and smirks at him.

Tommy punches Steve right back; Steve falls down, and gets back up with his fists raised, and they’re not right at all, his thumbs under his fingers where they can get broken, but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t have time to hit back. Tommy lands him a good one, and then Bucky gets Tommy right in the eye, and another in his stomach ‘cause he’s mean.

The kids jeer at her, call her a tomboy, but they also laugh at Tommy ‘cause he got beaten by a girl.

“Who wants your stupid braids, anyway, Miss _President_?” Tommy spits at her, and Bucky wants to chase after him real bad, to kick him till he says sorry, but Steve’s hurt, and her daddy says you don’t leave men behind.

Bucky keeps her fists up till Tommy’s gone, then gives Steve a hand up off the dirt.

“I could’a got him,” Steve says, wiping at his pants, but he also looks at her like she’s special, ‘stead of plain old Bucky Barnes with a missing tooth and boys’ pants and two annoying little brothers.

“Sure you could,” Bucky tells him. She almost means it, too. Steve’s little, but he didn’t run away, and her daddy says that’s half the battle. “Your mom at work?”

Steve nods, so Bucky takes him home with her. Mommy’ll fuss, but after Steve’s patched up and she’s snuck some of the iodine for her knuckles she can teach him how to throw a punch, the way her daddy showed her, and maybe he’ll stay for cookies and milk. He sure could use it, skinny as he is. Daddy says boys don’t get to be boys if it means hurting Bucky, but he also says growing boys need food. If Steve’s ever gonna grow at all someone’s gotta make him eat.

It might as well be Bucky.

* * *

She’s thirteen the next time someone pulls her pigtails, ‘cause Steve may be little but he’s scrappy, and Bucky is fierce like her daddy and the boys mostly leave her alone, after a while. All the boys but Steve, anyway, and he doesn’t count.

She’s thirteen, and her ma says she’ll need extra support soon, like the other girls, but Bucky’s in no rush. The girls at school are kind and funny and then they get breasts and start clawing at each other, and not even face to face like proper soldiers. Bucky doesn’t approve of stabbing folks in the back, when they don’t have a fighting chance.

Steve says it isn’t honorable, and Steve would know. If anyone’d have an excuse for fighting dirty, it would be Steve. Bucky could, if she _had_ to—Daddy made her promise—but mostly she’s good enough not to worry about it, to worry about Steve instead.

And then Billy Wagner catches her on her way to Home Ec, when Steve’s not around ‘cause he’s a grade below and a boy, and wraps her hair around his finger. “Heya, Buck.”

“Billy, let go, will’ya? I got class.”

“We got a few minutes,” Billy says, leaning in and grinning. He has an awful nice smile, all the girls say so.

“You got a few minutes,” Bucky tells him. “ _I_ have actual grades to maintain.”

Billy laughs, low and husky. He’s fifteen, and his voice is mostly done cracking. It sends a shiver through her, even though everyone knows he’s going nowhere. He’s been kept back a year, and the only reason he hasn’t dropped out yet is ‘cause he’s got two older brothers, already shining shoes and haunting the docks for day jobs. But he leans closer, and he’s wearing aftershave or something that smells real good, and he doesn’t have spots on his face or anything.

“You’re funny, Buck. A real funny girl.”

Bucky sticks her chin out. “What of it?”

“Want come be funny with me Saturday? Maybe go to the double feature?”

She wants to say yes, but—well, Daddy’ll probably come around, he knows she can take care of herself, and Billy’s tugging gently on her curls, but—”I can’t ditch Steve.”

“Rogers? You’re not dating him, are you?” Billy’s face darkens. “Carol said you weren’t.”

“No, we’re not—”

“Then it’s no problem.” His face clears, and he grins at her again, that nice, sunny smile that all the girls giggle about in the ladies’. “I’ll bring my sister, it’ll be swell. Pick you up at 2pm; wear something nice.”

He tugs again, once, right as the bell rings. Bucky barely gets to class on time, and gets scolded by Miss Reilly for having her mind on how to tell Steve instead of her knitting.

Turns out it’s time well spent, though, ‘cause Steve raises a hell of a lot of fuss. Over nothing.

“It’s not nothing!” He glares at her. “You had no right, Buck. I don’t want to date Missy Wagner, and I don’t want to go to the stupid talkies with—”

“You’ve been wanting to go for weeks now,” Bucky says. “Besides, Missy’s nice.”

“She’s also half a foot taller ‘n me.”

"If that’s a problem, you’re _never_ getting a date, Rogers.”

“Who says I want one?”

“Well, you were the one all fired up to see the new pictures.”

Steve crosses his arms, gives her a stubborn look he must’ve got from her ‘cause Mrs. Rogers never had such a mulish expression in her life. “Well you were,” Bucky says.

Steve deflates, kicks a rock. He’s only gonna scrape up his shoes that way; Bucky’s gonna have to swipe her dad’s polish kit Saturday morning to get him presentable for Missy.

“I wanted to go with you,” Steve mutters.

“You are?”

“No, Buck.” Steve swallows, peers up at her from under his bangs. “I wanted to go with _you_.”

“Oh. _Oh_.” Bucky blinks, and Steve curls in on himself, like when he’s been cornered by two or three fellas and he needs to protect his stomach, and that’s not alright, not by a longshot. Not on Bucky’s watch. “Why didn’t you say?”

“I just did, didn’t I?”

For the first time in her life, maybe, she doesn’t know what to say. They’ve been friends for seven years now, and maybe she should’ve recognized the way he looks at her, like other boys do, but hell, Steve’s thought the sun shined out of her since that first day she punched Tommy Miller, so how was she supposed to know? Boys don’t love girls for hitting people, Ma’s been awful persistent on that. They love girls for—taking care of them. Hell.

“Steve.”

“Nevermind,” Steve says, but Bucky grabs his hand, because her daddy doesn’t raise no cowards, and Steve couldn’t like her if she were one. It’s probably her imagination, but their hands fit together better than they did before. Steve’s warm, for once, and too startled to be indignant when Bucky tugs him closer.

“Steve Rogers, if you think there’s anyone I’d rather go to the talkies with—or anywhere else—then—”

Steve smiles, suddenly, and it’s so much nicer than Billy, so much warmer and sweeter and his lip curls up and he asks her, “What you gonna do, Buck?”

“Wonder where you fit all that stupid, for a start.”

Steve squeezes her hand, twines a lock of her hair around one finger, and Bucky decides then and there she ain’t never letting anyone else do that but him. “Seems to me like you keep care of most of it,” Steve says, and there’s no response to that but to whack him in the shoulder.

Steve doesn’t mind, though. He even carries her books home for her, and since he’s breathing nice and easy, Bucky deigns to let him.

* * * 

Steve turns eighteen and celebrates his birthday by proposing. “I know the ring ain’t much,” he says, as if it isn’t _everything_ , “but I couldn’t wait, Buck, not any longer. You have to know how I feel, how much I—I love you, and. I got a good job drawing illustrations, it’s regular pay and—you would make me so happy—not that you don’t already, of course I’m happy, but if you could see your way to—”

“Breathe,” Bucky says, ‘cause his face is getting all twisted up and his tongue and he’s gonna hyperventilate himself into an asthma attack or something, which is not how she pictured her proposal. “And let a girl get a word in edgewise, would you?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Steve turns red, but he breathes, and looks up at her hopefully from under his eyelashes, and she should’ve known that boy was trouble; the first time she met him was when he tried to deck a fella. 

He’s trouble, but he’s _her_ trouble, and there ain’t no answer she can give him but, “yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, you idiot, of course I’ll marry you.”

Steve’s hand shakes when he slides the ring on, but it fits perfectly, a thin band of gold and a single diamond, twinkling in the light from the fireworks. He curls his fingers around hers, and normally he gets grouchy if Bucky manhandles him but he lets her reel him in for a kiss, huffs a laugh and wraps her up in his arms.

They’ve gotten awful good at necking, the past couple of years. Steve knows exactly where the spot is behind her ear that makes her shudder, tugs on her earlobe and tangles fingers in her hair, pulls just a little. Bucky drags her lips down his cheek, drops her face to his shoulder and he’s skinny but strong, her Steve, strong enough to hold her up and make her fall into him all at the same time. His teeth scrape her neck, just a little, a gentle bite over the tendon that sends sparks shooting through her and makes her groan and good lord, she doesn’t want to wait for the wedding, whatever her parents might say. Steve’s ma has the night shift, too, they could have the apartment all to themselves for hours before he has to get her home, only first—

“Steve.”

“Hmm?” He kisses her shoulder, gentle fingers pushing the strap of her dress out of the way.

“I gotta be serious, for a moment.”

“Oh, well.” She can feel his smile against her skin. “As long as it’s just a moment, Buck, so I know you’re really you.”

She wants to hit him, but she means it, and hitting would just lead to wrestling, which would lead to more necking, or maybe the things she’s gotta talk about first. Steve settles, though, lifts his head to meet her eyes, rubs her cheek with his thumb. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“Can.” She doesn’t know how to say this, tongue-tied the way only Steve can ever make her, ‘cause she can call him stupid and a punk and sock him in the arm but some things, some things she can only talk about with girls, and Steve definitely ain’t that, or she wouldn’t need to discuss it. She fiddles with the buttons on his shirt, his good Sunday shirt ‘cause even though they’re just in the park, watching fireworks, it was still a date and his birthday and he was gonna propose, and he always put on good shirts for Bucky. “I want kids,” she says, slow and certain, “but I want you first, for a little while. To save money up, and to. To have you, to myself. I know that’s selfish, maybe, but I can’t really help it. Don’t want to, anyway. Do you mind?”

Steve tips her chin up, just a little ‘cause she’s still taller than him, but enough so he can see her eyes. “How could I possibly mind having you, Bucky? If you want to be my wife, and make a home with me, and share my bed and my name, how could I ever, _ever_ mind? You let me know when you’re ready to have kids, and I’ll be on board for that, I would.” He swallows. “I would be so honored to have a family with you. But only when you’re ready.” He grins, suddenly, looking less solemn and more like _her_ Steve, with his sass and his humor that no one else laughs at but her, and that twinkle in his eye that signifies no good. “Besides,” he says, “we can have an awful lot of fun practicing in the meantime.”

“Steve Rogers,” Bucky declares, “you’re going to be the death of me.”

He laughs, and kisses her again, and when Bucky asks about going back to his place, he gives her his coat and his arm and spends half the walk home stumbling from looking at her instead of where he’s going. The key’s under a rock, of course, ‘cause Steve never remembers where he’s put it otherwise (she needs to get him a keychain, something solid, that won’t fall out of his pocket) and he laughs again when she pulls him indoors by his tie.

He lives on the third floor, not so high that it generally triggers his asthma, not so low that the rent’s too expensive. The apartment’s dark, but the windows are open to air it out in the muggy July heat, and Steve’s face is lit by flashes of red and blue as he walks her back towards his bedroom.

She’s been here, before, when he’s sick and laid up, but it’s different, now. Steve’s healthy, mostly, as much as he ever is, and his eyes are locked on her, and she wants this, she does, but his hands feel big on her waist, big and warm and for the first time in her nineteen years, she’s nervous of him. Of what he’s gonna do.

“You sure about this, Buck? We don’t have to, I won’t mind—”

Bucky sticks her chin up before she can even think about it, and twists her arms behind her back to unbutton her dress. “Maybe I will.”

Steve smiles, then, leans in to kiss her, and she doesn’t even notice when his hands replace hers, when she twines her arms around his neck and presses into him. And then his hands are on the back of her brassiere, tugging at the clasp, and Bucky steps back, lets everything pool at her feet, until she’s half-naked, in nylons and her garter belt, and Steve sucks in a breath. “God, Bucky, look at you.”

Bucky takes his hand in hers, cups it over her breast, and her breasts are small but it’s okay, ‘cause so is Steve. He rubs a thumb over her nipple, and she can’t help moaning, leaning into his touch. “Can I—”

“Anything,” Bucky says, and Steve picks her up, drops her gently on the bed, and takes her breast in his mouth. Bucky gasps, and he lifts his head up, grins at her.

“Like that?”

“You know I do, Rogers.”

“You’re gonna be a Rogers, too,” Steve murmurs, bending to suck on her other breast, and Bucky runs her fingers through his hair, because she is, because it feels so good, because she loves him and his lips and his mouth and his hands on her garter belt, undoing suspenders and he pulls away to roll down her nylons, kissing her knee and her calf as he goes. 

“I could draw you like this,” Steve says. “You’re so gorgeous, Buck. Nothing on you but my ring, so beautiful.” He kisses her foot, and she wants to let him draw her—wants to see herself like that, like he does—but she wants other things more.

“Steve.”

He pulls her garter belt off, her other stocking.

“Steve.”

“Yeah, Bucky?”

“Why’re you still dressed?”

Steve’s eyes darken, and he strips faster ‘n Bucky can blink, almost, which isn’t fair ‘cause she wants to look at him, but then he pulls his wallet out, gets a rubber and puts it on the bed by her hip, and she can’t stop from digging at him.

“Awful sure of yourself there, Stevie.”

“Sure of you,” Steve says, which might be an insult from anyone else, but not the way he says it, not the way he means. He kisses her hip, her thigh, and then he kisses her in places she didn’t know people should be kissed, and she can’t help arching up, meeting his mouth, his tongue. He hums, sending shocks through her, and presses a hand to her stomach. It’s not enough to keep her down if she doesn’t want to stay, but it grounds her, gives her something else to hold onto, as he flicks his tongue against her in a staccato that sends her swirling into pleasure. Something’s building inside her, big and overwhelming, and Steve pushes a finger in, where his dick’s gonna go, and keeps on kissing, sucking, and she can’t take it, she can’t, but then there’s another finger, stretching her, and she can’t breathe, and Steve is licking and kissing and _there_ , her anchor, and Bucky holds onto him and lets everything else go, in a dizzying wave, like lightning rolling over and through her. Finally, finally Steve lifts his head, smiles at her, soft and uncertain, and asks if she liked it okay.

“Did I. Boy, you got a lot of stupid in that head,” Bucky manages, and pulls at his arm till he slides up the bed to meet her lips. “Where did you learn—”

“Books,” Steve says.

“I gotta get some of those books, then,” Bucky tells him, and Steve grins and kisses her again.

“It gets better,” he says. “In the books, anyway,” and then he’s sitting up, unwrapping the rubber, and a little bit of nerves return, but mostly she’s loose and happy and anyway, Steve loves her enough to put a ring on her finger, she can’t let him down by giving in to a load of stupid nerves. He’s awfully big though—his dick—and whatever Molly Reardon says over lunch at the factory, Bucky can’t help but wonder how he’s gonna fit all the way inside her.

He moves slowly, props himself up over her with one hand and uses the other to line up, and his arm shakes as he pushes in. It hurts, a little, a stab of pain and Bucky can’t help biting her lip, even as she stares up at him, at the look on his face, and sees amazement and love twist into concern.

“You okay?”

“Just, gimme a minute.” She breathes through her nose and runs her hands up his side, his back. He’s skinny, but strong, and he’s _hers_ , now, in every way that matters, and she leans up to kiss him, shifting in a way that makes both of them gasp. “Yeah,” she says, licking into his mouth, hot and open. “Yeah, Steve, I’m okay.”

He slides out and then in again, careful, controlled, and it hurts at first, it does, sort of burning as her body stretches around him, but then it starts to feel good, so good, sort of full and— _right_. Bucky arches up to meet him, meet his thrusts, meet his mouth. He kisses her like she’s his salvation, like he can’t do anything but. His tongue is warm and wet and Bucky sucks it in, pulls it into her. She hitches a leg up over his waist, pulls all of him closer, and that same buzz of pleasure is building up inside her.

“God,” Steve whispers, “you’re so…” he trails off, peppers kisses on her face, her cheek, her shoulder. He tweaks her nipple with one hand, a sharp twist of pleasure and pain that makes her cry out, and then his hand drifts lower, to where their bodies meet, and he drums his fingers against her. “You like that, huh? So beautiful, so, God, Bucky, sweetheart.”

“Love you,” Bucky says, as the waves crash over her again, “Steve, Steve, please, yes, I love you, I love you, I love you…” Her body feels like it’s electrified, like it’s moving through molasses, like everything is numb except for where Steve’s touching her, pushing in and out and tapping and the center of her overflows and Steve shouts her name, just once, as she clenches around him, and then he collapses on top of her and Bucky collapses into herself.

They lie like that, together, as they relearn how to breathe, Steve’s head dropped to her breast. Bucky combs her fingers through his hair, ignoring the sweat, listening for any hint of wheezing, but there’s nothing, just Steve’s skin, warm and damp beneath her hands and the wash of his breath on her chest. When he rolls off of her she feels empty, suddenly, which is ridiculous because it’s not like Steve’s ever been inside her before, but she misses him, for all he’s a handsbreadth away from her, and grinning like a loon.

“Ain’t you the cat that got the canary,” Bucky says. 

Steve captures her left hand, presses a kiss to her palm. “You’re more than cat enough for me.”

“Steve Rogers!”

He laughs. “Stay there,” he says, sitting up and pulling off the rubber. He disappears into the bathroom, returning with a damp flannel. He washes her gently, and even without seeing the small drops of blood, Bucky can tell she’ll be sore in the morning. It’s worth it, though, if it makes her feel like that.

He kisses her, once on the mouth and once on the nose, and fetches his sketchbook and pencils. “Can I draw you now, Future Mrs. Rogers?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, curling up in Steve’s bed, where she belongs, with Steve’s ring on her finger. “You do whatever you gotta, Stevie.”


	2. Chapter 2

_By all accounts their wedding was sweet but plain: Rogers wore his regular Sunday suit and Bucky borrowed a wedding dress from a neighbor. 1 They were married by the same priest who had overseen their christenings, their first communions, and their confirmations; after, their families returned to the Rogers’s apartment for lunch, and Sarah Rogers spent the night at the Barnes’s, giving Bucky and Steve privacy for their wedding night.2 The next day, she returned to sewing dresses, 20 years old and the main bread-winner, while Steve balanced selling illustrations with caring for his ailing mother.  
-excerpt from _Sergeant America: How Bucky Barnes Changed the Social Contract for Women in the World War II Generation _, Joreen, Random House, 1970_

Of course, by the time Bucky does get Steve all to herself, the first thing they do is stop talking to each other; the second thing they do is scream. She knows Mom would’ve liked to see a baby before she died, but she can’t be sorry for not bringing an infant into a TB-infected home. She _can’t_. And she’s pretty sure that’s not what’s eating at Steve, but Steve’s mostly sat around with a bent hand over his mouth, and Bucky isn’t psychic, there’s no way to be sure.

At least he gives her his arm while they walk. It might be instinctive—Steve would probably give her his arm while hobbling on crutches with a broken leg—but it means he knows she’s there. 

“She’s with Dad, anyway,” he says, when they get home from the funeral. Bucky wants to shake him. They don’t have to stay with her folks if he doesn’t want to—though the apartment’s going to have a lot of reminders, until she packs up Mom’s stuff—but they could’ve accepted the lift from church to the cemetery, or home again after. She’d stupidly hoped maybe he walked because he wanted to talk to her, the way he won’t around other people, even though he’s known her parents 15 years now, but for all his pig-headed bravery, Steve doesn’t like to talk. Not about what matters. Not about himself.

She doesn’t know what to do, is the thing, and it’s terrifying, because it’s _Steve_. It’s Steve, and she doesn’t know how to reach him, except to keep putting Mom’s recipes on the table, to ask if there’s anything particular he wants to save—and even then, he just says he trusts her.

Well, he shouldn’t, ‘cause Bucky has half a mind to just pack it all up and sell it, and then where will Steve be? Without his mother’s photos, for a start, or that lace collar his grandma tatted herself, on the boat from Ireland. Without Mom’s nursing books, or the quilt she made while she was pregnant with Steve, or any of the letters she kept wrapped up in a faded red ribbon, that she’d gotten from Steve’s dad during the War. 

She wants to sell it, to get rid of it all, to pile it up and burn it, if only to make him _talk_.

Instead, she makes three piles, of things to keep, things to sell, and things they can probably throw out. Most of it Mom’d already sorted for her, before the TB got so bad she was on bedrest. She works diligently all afternoon while Steve shuts himself in their bedroom.

It’s not until suppertime, when he tries to tell her he isn’t hungry, that she loses her temper and snaps at him, “Steven Rogers, you go sit at that table and eat your dinner this instant!”

“I said I wasn’t hungry, Buck.” Steve’s voice is low, tightly controlled, which should be a warning sign but Bucky’s too mad to let it stop her.

“And I said go eat. Look at you! Like you’ve got enough meat on your bones to skip meals, turning down perfectly good food when we’re scraping our fingers just to put it on the table and—”

“We? Don’t you mean _you_? You’ve been out working every day, while I’m the one who couldn’t hold a job, isn’t that what you mean?”

“If that was what I meant I’d say it!” Bucky glares at him. “Don’t go putting words into my mouth—”

“Not like I’m putting anything else there,” Steve snaps. “Too busy getting fired right and left, hey, Buck? Good thing my wife belongs to the union, since I can’t even take care of her, right? Can’t buy food, or pay rent, or—”

“You were taking care of Mom.”

“You’re goddamn right I was. And I have to wonder, losing job after job ‘cause I couldn’t make shifts, where the hell _you_ were, Bucky.”

It’s like he’s slapped her, like he’s socked her right in the jaw, or the stomach. It’s worse. It’s so much worse, she can’t breathe. She doesn’t know what Steve sees in her face, but suddenly his own crumples, and then his arms are around her and he’s whispering apologies, pulling her down onto the bed, onto his lap, where he can envelop her and hold her and it doesn’t matter so much that he’s short, or skinny, when her head drops to his shoulder and his arms are sure and his words pour directly into her ear.

“Don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he says, when she can distinguish speech again, “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Some husband you’ve got, yelling instead of—I just, I can take care of myself, and—”

“But you don’t have to.” She can’t quite look at him yet, because the hurt is still there, a bruise of purple and blue and at the same time she knows how much more he’s hurting. “For better or worse, remember? Till the end of the line, Steve.”

“I know, I know.”

“I loved her too,” Bucky whispers, and his breath hitches.

“I know you did, Bucky. I do.” He rubs her cheek with his thumb, and she turns her face, meets his eyes. “And here I am, mad at myself and lashing out at you instead; what kind of man does that make me?”

“The kind I chose. I could’a had anyone, you know.”

Steve looks away, his cheeks reddening. “I know,” he says.

“No, I don’t think you do. I think you—Steve, I could’a had anyone, and I _chose **you**_.”

“Choosing a man who’ll treat you like that just makes you the same as a lot of other women, Buck, it doesn’t mean—”

“It does. For starters, you’re not the kind of man who hits women, not ever.”

“No, I’m just the kind to shout at ‘em when they’re down,” Steve says, but his arms are still around her, holding her close to him. Bucky tugs his hair, fixes it back where it’s flopped over his eyes, so she can see them clearly.

“Maybe you’re the kind who knows I can take it.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“Well, maybe you’re the kind who knows I can give back every bit as good as I get.”

Steve laughs, then, which means she’s halfway to getting him right again, or at least, as right as he can be for now. “You sure can,” he says ruefully. “Still not sure I like that man very much, though. 

“Maybe,” Bucky says, because she’s not above pressing her luck, “you’re the kind who apologizes by coming to the table and eating his dinner.”

“Maybe,” Steve says, and he’s smiling.

She wriggles off him, pulls him to his feet. “Maybe the kind who comes back to bed after dinner, and apologizes in other ways?”

“Definitely that kind.” Steve’s voice is low, now, in a completely different way, and when he touches her cheek it’s a whole different kind of promise, the kind that burns into her, straight to her core. She wants to kiss him, just once, to seal it in, to feel his tongue between her lips and his hand inching her dress up, as if she might not notice if he just goes slowly enough, as if she can’t feel every bit of him that ever touches any bit of her, but she’s got real meat, for once, a gift from the neighbors, and she’ll be damned before she lets Steve skip real meat, when it’s a miracle he didn’t get Mom’s TB and the autumn chill is starting to creep through the windows at night.

She holds his hand all the way to the table, instead, and when he tries to tell her she gave him too much pot roast, more than his fair share, she lies and says she tasted it in the kitchen, to make sure it was done. He probably doesn’t believe her, but it doesn’t matter as long as he eats it.

“Get your strength up for after dinner,” Bucky tells him, and Steve stops complaining in favor of digging in.

* * * 

They move into a smaller apartment, a one-bedroom, since it’s just them now and the rent’s cheaper. Steve still won’t move in with her folks, but they go to Sunday dinner, every week on the regular. Sean’s eighteen now, and off to basic training, breaking Daddy’s heart by joining the Navy.

“Those sailor boys don’t know how to look after each other the way good infantrymen do,” Daddy says, but Sean’s already enlisted.

Steve doesn’t talk much at the family dinners, once Sean signs up. He gets on with her folks just fine, usually, but Daddy can’t stop talking about the army, about how Steve’s asthma is such a shame, they could use a man like him—as if Steve would enlist, if only his lungs allowed it, as if it’s a given.

Daddy lost two brothers in the War, and Ma lost one, and Bucky, she doesn’t intend to lose her husband, not to bullets. She can’t stop the boys from doing what they want, but Steve’s _hers_ , and even if he had a body to match his heart, she wouldn’t let him join. She’d kill him herself first, if it came to it.

She can’t say that to Daddy, though, and she can’t say it to Ma, who married an army man, and she can’t say it to Sean, off to get himself drowned or something, and she sure as hell can’t say it to Steve.

She watches him, though, during those dinners, like a hawk. He cleans his plate, but he keeps his head down, and mostly chats with Patty, who announced the day after he turned twelve that he wants to be a priest. Ma’d cried, and hugged him, and Steve’d said, “Bucky wanted to be a pilot like Amelia Earhart ‘till she was eight,” and Bucky’d hit him.

Jack’s silent too, not like Steve, exactly, but like a teenaged boy. Money’s going to be less tight, with Sean sending pay home, and not have a mouth to feed or a body to clothe, and Ma’s pushing him to think about a trade school, maybe. He could get a license, and make some real money, if he applies himself.

“You know,” Ma says when she and Bucky are doing the washing up, “with Sean gone, your old bedroom’d be free again.”

“Ma,” Bucky says.

“I’m just saying, as long as you two are trying to save money anyway . . .”

“No, Ma.” She takes another plate, dries it carefully. “Steve and I are doing fine.”

Her ma sighs. “He treating you right, Bucky?”

Bucky nearly drops her plate. “Steve? Is _Steve_ treating me _right_?”

“Well, it’s been almost two years, and. You’re the one working steadily, but sewing doesn’t pay the way—you work yourself to the bone for him, baby, and you don’t even have a baby of your own to show for it, and—”

“Ma.” Bucky puts the plate away, hands trembling somewhere between sadness and the kind of blinding anger she only ever gets on Steve’s behalf.

“You could’ve gone to college, you were that smart. Or, married the Reilly’s oldest, they own a pharmacy, or any one of the young men your father brings home.”

“I didn’t want college,” Bucky says, “and I didn’t want Mike Reilly and I didn’t want. I wanted Steve, Mama, I’ve only ever wanted Steve. Couldn’t want anyone else if I tried.”

“I worry, is all,” Ma says, and Bucky hugs her. “And a grandchild’d be awfully nice, honey. I’d love to stick it to Eileen Murphy, her youngest just had twins, did you know?”

When they get home that night, even though it’s late and Bucky’s got to be up with the light to go sew dresses for rich women, she pushes Steve onto the bed and drops to her knees, before him, hands quick and firm on his belt.

“Bucky?”

“Just, just let me,” Bucky says, pulling him out of his pants. He takes good care of her, her Steve, whatever the rest of the world thinks. He does the best he can, and sometimes he’s up half the night, sitting with his head over a bowl of boiling water, breathing as quietly as his rattling lungs allow so he doesn’t wake her. Sometimes he works himself to the bone, ignores coughs and colds and pushes until there’s no push left, to put extra money aside, to put meat on the table, to take her out to the pictures or Coney Island or dancing, even though he can’t do anything fast. Sometimes he comes home dripping blood from his nose, his knuckles, one eye swollen shut, but he always sits still and lets her tend him. She wants to tend him now, too, because he takes just as good care of her as he can, and she loves him, right down to his broken lungs that keep him out of the army, or the navy, or anywhere he could get shot and die on her and she couldn’t do a thing to try to stop it.

Steve runs a hand through her hair, but he doesn’t say anything, so Bucky leans forward and captures his dick in her mouth. He does speak then, jerks and says her name, and she hums in response. He tastes good, feels good, whether he’s inside her the way the Bible says to be, or the way the Old Testament most certainly said not, or like this, now, firming up between her cheeks. She can’t take all of him, he’s too big for that, when he’s full-size, but she’s getting better at it. And she can collect spit in her mouth, because god, Steve makes her drool, the heft and shape of him and the sounds he makes, the gasps and the way he twitches, his hand on her cheek and his thighs beneath her fingers and his dick in her mouth, all twitching, and she likes it so much more than a good girl probably should.

She scratches a little, at his thigh, because it makes him groan, and pulls off so she can lick him, tip to base, get him good and wet, and get her hand wet too. She can’t take him all in, but she can use her hands where her mouth can’t reach, and Steve bites her name out. She kisses the tip of his dick, runs her tongue over the slit before taking him back in, and hollowing her cheeks in that way that makes his toes curl, and pushes her head down, as much as she can, and then back up again, over and over. His hands clench the bedspread, then he brushes her cheek again, whispers, “Buck,” in that way that means he’s about to come, and she swallows and swallows as much as she can, because the only thing she’s ever wanted is to take care of Steve, for as far back as she can remember, and there’s nothing better than the hoarse way he says her name, after, when he tugs her up to meet his mouth.

“What was that about?” Steve asks later, when she’s curled up against him in her nightgown.

“I vowed to take care of you,” Bucky says, “before God and everyone.”

“Pretty sure that wasn’t what God had in mind,” Steve says.

“You complaining?”

“Why, would you ever let me hear the end of it if I did?”

Bucky hits him in the stomach, and Steve retaliates by holding her down and tickling her, which is dirty pool, until she cries uncle. Then he pulls her half on top of him, and she falls asleep to the beat of his heart and the even sound of his breathing, not a single wheeze to be heard.

* * * 

They move apartments two more times in the next three years; Steve gets sick and Bucky stays home to take care of him, now that Mom’s gone, and they both end up losing their jobs. The savings they’ve squirreled away dwindle, and the apartments get smaller, and Bucky doesn’t know how to convince Steve it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, not as long as it’s the two of them, together.

She ends up cutting her hair off, selling it in the slide from autumn into winter, to pay for Steve’s heart medicine. Her mama tells her she looks just like a boy, and turns away, tears in her eyes, but Bucky doesn’t care as long as Steve still wants her.

Steve’s too sick to say much of anything about it, for a long time, and by the time he’s better, she’s started wearing some of Jack’s old clothes and passing for a boy to sell newspapers. The pay’s not great, but it gives her plenty of time to go clean houses during the day, and a little extra cash is nothing to be sneezed at.

Steve just scratches the short hair at the back of her head and says it’s easier to kiss her, now, without all that mess in the way. She hits him, gently, and it probably doesn’t count since she also lets him pull her down into his arms and demonstrate. He’s too skinny, from all the time in bed, and Bucky rolls over so he can cushion himself on her. She doesn’t cry, because there’s no point crying now, when he’s fine, but she kisses him fiercely, tries to pour into his mouth all the hours and days of fear, the leaden minutes she’ll never get back when her ma called Father O’Malley for Last Rites, when she tried to picture going on, in a world without Steve in it.

She doesn’t cry, but she kisses and kisses and Steve kisses back, shushes her, runs his hands over her breasts and her stomach and she hitches her legs up, wants him inside her suddenly, desperately, wants to feel _full_ , to feel touched by him everywhere.

Steve fumbles with the rubber, and she almost tells him to forget it, but she’s not quite ready yet, too close to losing Steve to accept raising a baby without him. Before she can say anything he’s pushing inside her, and both of them moan, soft and low. She loves this, loves the way he glides in and out, so careful with her, like Steve could break her (he could, of course, but not like this), loves the wild look that comes into his eyes, even now, when she clenches around him. 

“Bucky,” he whispers, peppering her with kisses, on her cheek, behind her ear, her neck, her shoulder, “sweetheart, God, you feel so good, so warm and soft, I love you, Bucky, so much, so much.”

She digs her fingers into his back, just a little, pulls him closer to her, and he must read her mind, or have known her too long, because he shushes her again, says, “I’m here, Buck, I’m not going anywhere, I promise, I’m here, I’m here.”

He reaches down to find the spot that drives her crazy, where their bodies meet, and rubs in circles, making her gasp.

“Steve, please.”

“Shhh,” he says, nipping at her neck, quick, short bites that do absolutely nothing to quiet her down. “Shhh.”

Bucky strokes her hands down his side, squeezes his ass and he laughs, taps his fingers faster in retaliation. She can’t help groaning, arching into his touch as pleasure pulses through her. Steve drops his head then, thrusts a little harder, faster, grunts her name in a litany of sounds that run together, become unintelligible, until he collapses on top of her with a shout.

She combs her fingers through his hair and scratches, lightly, the way he scratched hers, and if he doesn’t mind she could pass for a boy, if he still looks at her and wants to do this, to end up here, with his head on her chest and their bodies almost as close as they can be, then there’s nothing else that can bother her, not even her ma’s disappointment.

Not anything.


	3. Chapter 3

_”What is it, sweetheart?”_  
 _“It’s. Oh, Steve. It’s Sean—he—Steve, they killed him. They hit Pearl Harbor, and killed him. They killed my baby brother.”_  
-Kevin Costner as Steve Rogers and Julia Roberts as Bucky Barnes Rogers  
America’s Sweethearts _, 1992_

“4-F,” Bucky says, staring at the crumpled paper in Steve’s hand.

“I’m gonna try again, tell ‘em I’m from—Ohio, or—”

“It’s illegal to lie on your enlistment form, son.” Bucky’s dad drops a hand on Steve’s shoulder, squeezes, like he’s _proud_ of Steve, for trying to sign up, trying to _die_ , when he’d be lucky to even make it through basic, make it off American soil. Even Sean didn’t manage that. 

Proud of Steve for lying, three times now, even when it’s illegal, lying to the Army and to God and to _Bucky_.

“4-F,” Bucky says. She can’t say anything else, is numb inside, has been ever since her dad found Steve’s crumpled enlistment form in his Sunday jacket and asked why it said Steve was from Westchester.

“ _I_ don’t care,” Patty announces. “And I know where you can slip someone a few extra bucks, too, Harry said, I’m gonna sign up, Dad, just wait. We’ll show ‘em what for, and then—”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort.” Ma slaps him, not hard, just enough to make him startle into silence. Ma’s never hit any of them. “You’re sixteen, and you’re going to be a priest, not kill people, do you hear me Patrick Henry Barnes?”

“Yes ma’am, I hear you.”

“4-F.”

“Yeah, Buck, 4-F.” Steve thrusts his enlistment form into his pocket. “You want to make something of it?”

“You promised me. You promised—”

Steve looks like he’s going to crumble for a second, but he straightens his spine, tells her, “there’s bigger things at issue—”

“You _promised_ me.”

“Men are gonna get shot at, Buck. Good men. Jack’s out there right now, at Parris Island. I gotta do my part, too, whatever the cost.” He reaches for her hand, but Bucky jerks away. Behind her, she hears the sounds of her parents hustling Patty out of the room, but she can’t be bothered with them right now. She can’t be bothered with anything but Steve, and his need to up and leave her.

“You won’t be paying the cost, though, will you?” Her voice starts soft, but she’s shouting by the time she says, “that’s on me to pay, ain’t it, Steve? I’ll be the one left home, while you—”

“Freedom’s worth it,” Steve says, and she _hates_ him for a minute, she does, hates him for standing there and spouting those words and throwing his life away like he belongs to himself and not to her, like she’s not important, like she hasn’t spent her whole life scrimping and saving to keep him alive, keep him _safe_.

“You wouldn’t be fighting for freedom. You’d be dead a week into basic.” Steve clenches his jaw, but she can’t stop herself, can’t hold back. “They’d take me first, Steve. The army’d take me, and I’d do a helluva lot more good than you would.”

“You’re angry.”

“You’re damned right I’m angry!” She’s screaming, and it hurts, her voice, her heart, it hurts, and she doesn’t want to hurt. She wants the ice back, the numbness—she wants last week back, when Steve didn’t need medicine and was able to sell some pictures, wants last year back, when her hair was still long and they lived in an apartment with a real bedroom, a door they could close and everything, wants ten years back, when Steve held her hand on the way home from church and twenty years back, wants to go back to that playground and let Tommy whale on him, because what’s the point? What’s the point, in any of it, if he’s just going to throw it away after ideals and dreams of being like other guys, what’s the point in choosing him, always, over everything, everyone, if he’s not gonna choose her back? He swore, before God and their folks, to the end of the line, and he put a ring on her finger and a name at the end of hers, and now he’s got a piece of paper in his pocket that says it was a lie, that he might just go out and help death part them a little sooner, ‘cause however much he’s worth to Bucky ain’t ever gonna be enough. She doesn’t count, apparently, not when he can drop dead from a breathing attack in the middle of Jersey and pretend that’s what makes him as good as the next man.

Steve reaches for her again, but only to brush her bangs back, like when she sells papers. Like when she’s pretending to be a boy. “They also serve who stand and wait,” he says, screwing his mouth to one side.

“Have fun with that,” Bucky tells him.

“Oh, I’ll have fun.” He’s angry now too, she can tell, that vein in his temple throbbing and he steps back, away from her, like he’s afraid to touch her. “I’ll have fun wasting money on bail, when they arrest you for falsifying records. I’ll have fun asking your parents for money to pay the fine, writing you letters over at Greenwich Village, telling the neighbors my wife’s a jailbird, I’ll have real fun, Buck. War’s just a barrel of laughs. Take you first—we’ll see who has fun with that, won’t we?”

“I guess we will,” Bucky says, and turns around, leaves before he can call her back. She can’t go back, right now. Can’t look at him. 

For the first time since she was six years old, Steve’s face is the last thing she wants to see.

* * *

It’s long past dark by the time Bucky gets home. Steve’s at the table, in his undershirt and pants, with an empty plate and a half-full bottle of whiskey. He doesn’t turn when she shuts the door, locks it, just stares at his glass and asks, “Where you been, Buck?”

She can’t tell him.

She _can’t_.

Only the paper’s burning a hole in her pocket, and Steve sounds so _tired_ , and Sean is dead and Jack’s a Marine, and one way or another Bucky’s gonna have to learn to live without Steve, somehow. She doesn’t even realize she’s made a sound until he looks up, until his face changes. “Bucky?”

Bucky hurls herself at him, at his feet, buries her face in his lap. “Please don’t be mad. Please, Steve, I can’t, I can’t, please, please don’t be mad.”

His hand comes to rest on her hair, her stupid, short hair and she wraps her arms around his waist and begs him, because she can’t do anything else, because it’s the only way to keep from crying.

“I’m not mad, sweetheart, I was just worried. Hell, I know you can take care of yourself, better than I could, but it’s late—”

“Not about that,” Bucky says, and there’s tears in her eyes after all; she can feel Steve’s clothes turning damp beneath her cheek.

“I’m not mad about earlier, either.” Steve strokes her hair, and his hand is gentle, careful, like she’s glass or something.

Bucky shakes her head. “You should be.” She makes herself look up, look him in the eye. She’s not a coward, she _won’t_ be, and he deserves at least that much from her. “Steve, you should be so angry, but I wish you wouldn’t.”

He thumbs the tears away from under her eyes. “Why should I be angry, Buck?”

Bucky takes the paper from her pocket, because she can’t say the words, isn’t that strong after all. Steve looks down at the crumpled sheet and freezes. “1-A?” he asks.

“Steve.”

He tugs on her until she gets up, then pulls her onto his lap. She’s always felt over-sized on his lap, ungainly, but she curls into him, now, curves her back so she can press her face into the nape of his neck, and pretend she’s small enough to fit. Steve’s arms close around her, hold her against him and if she can’t see his face, if she closes her eyes and just feels him . . .

“I’m not mad.”

Bucky can’t help it, the sound she makes, part hiccup and part sob and part disbelief.

“I’m not mad at you,” Steve amends, and that makes more sense, but also none at all. “I’m proud of you,” he adds.

Bucky pulls back to stare at him, and he laughs. “I am, honey, no lie. It takes guts, to enlist when there’s a war on.” 

“You’ve got plenty of guts,” Bucky says. Steve’s arms tighten, so she rests her forehead against his and repeats it. “I mean it, Steve. You’re better ‘n all of ‘em.”

“Not better than you, though.” Steve kisses her, once, twice. His smile is blinding, even so close she has to cross her eyes to see it. “Never been better than you, Buck.” He strokes her cheek, down her neck. “Don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

Bucky feels the tears start again, and she does her best to hold them back but she never could lie to Steve. “Honey, no, it’s fine. I’ll be right there with you in Basic in no time, you’ll see.”

She shakes her head—doesn’t want that either—but words fail her. All she has in her is to cling to Steve, to give in to the stroke of his hands on her back and the soft murmur of his voice in her ear, the rise and fall of his chest and the slightly unsteady beat of his heart beneath her palm. If she tries hard enough, lets them overtake her, maybe she can forget about the crumpled piece of paper and the train she has to catch next week, and the surefire knowledge that one way or another, she’s gonna have to live without Steve for the first time in almost twenty years.

“Take me to bed, Steve,” she whispers, “please.”

He stands, putting her back on her feet, and pulls back the curtain separating their bed from the kitchen area. Bucky makes short work of her pants and shirt, the binder she got from one of the girls at the old factory, which makes her already small breasts disappear. Part of her wants to climb into bed naked, to climb into Steve’s arms and stay there, but it’s late, and she’s got to be up early to sell papers in the morning, so she tugs on her nightgown instead.

Steve pulls her close anyway, spooning up behind her with an arm on her stomach. “Just wait,” he says. “I’ll join you, and we’ll end the war in no time, come home, and start that family on our army pensions.”

“Promise?” Bucky asks, half asleep already.

“I promise,” Steve tells her. “Before God and everyone.”

* * * 

Her folks want to try and get her out of it, of course, but it’s pretty clear there’s no way to do that without prison time, or a blue card, or a trip to an asylum, so they compromise by not speaking to her.

“The hair, and the newspapers, that was bad enough,” her ma says, “but this? You think _this_ is the way to honor your brother? Your country?”

“You’ll get good men killed,” Daddy says, which hurts more. Didn’t he teach her to hold her own with any man? To punch low and dirty, to punch hard and fast, to kick ‘em when they’re down till they can’t get up again? It’s not the kind of fighting Steve ever did, or approved of, but it’s the kind of fighting needed in battle, isn’t it? The kind of fighting that’ll kill the enemy, and keep the good men, the ones too dumb to know how to really fight, alive?

Patty thinks it’s amazing, but Patty’s a kid, and the one who told her who to pay off for the physical. “Just don’t be in a hurry to follow me,” Bucky tells him, when he sneaks off school to come say good-bye. “You belong in that seminary, not in the mud.”

“And you do?”

“More ‘n you, Father Barnes.”

Patty laughs at that, ducks his head so she can’t see his eyes. “Still,” he says after shoving her, “don’t you think maybe I’d be better, as a priest, I mean, if I understand what everyone’s been through? What they’ve had to do?”

“Maybe. But maybe it’ll take something you’re not ready to give up yet. Maybe sixteen-year-olds don’t belong in war, Pat. Jack and me, we’ll get it sorted. You stay here and keep an eye on Steve for me, make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“Stupid like bribe someone to let him in the army?”

Bucky rolls her eyes, and Patty grins, hugs her and slaps her back, and Jack’s already in South Carolina, so there’s no one else to be proud or mad or embarrassed or shamed, no one but her and Steve. 

The night before she leaves, she slips her engagement ring off her finger, gives it to Steve to keep for her. “Don’t lose it, now,” she says, curling his hand around it. “I expect you to give it back to me, when this is over.”

Steve answers by pulling her tight against him and kissing her till he’s breathless. They do it, twice, and then Steve twists his fingers inside her and curls them, sends waves of pleasure rolling through her. She’s come three times already, and it’s long and languid, now, slow to crest and slow to fade. Her whole body feels like it’s humming, and Steve keeps rolling her nipples between his teeth and brushing his thumb over the outside of her cunt, making her moan. She’s sore, but it feels so good she can’t complain, not when he looks up at her like she’s the sun in the sky, not when she’s leaving him in the morning.

“Look at you,” Steve whispers, pushing up so he can nibble her earlobe. “You’re so gorgeous, Buck, so beautiful, like this, all flushed and wet for me, aren’t you, sweetheart?” He scrapes his teeth against her neck, flashes of pain and pleasure and Bucky doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to be anywhere but here, in Steve’s bed, in Steve’s arms. 

“Please,” she pants, “oh, Steve, please,” and he smiles against her skin, wriggles another finger up inside her. The first time she climaxed it felt like electricity, like lightning, but now it’s heat, embers being breathed back into fire, and the pleasure and pain flicker through her, warming and burning and dragging her into the flames. She fists the sheets, can’t help it, and Steve’s hand is like a branding iron; she’ll feel him all day tomorrow, maybe even the day after, take that part of him with her to Basic and never let it go.

She falls asleep a few hours before dawn, naked except for her wedding ring, to the soft scratch of Steve’s pencil on the drawing paper she had planned to give him at Christmas but handed over early, when she knew she wouldn’t be home.

She wakes to the sun shining through the window, to the weight of Steve’s arms pulling her against his chest, and the hitch of his breath in her ears. The binding’s going to hurt on her breasts, after last night, and her legs ache, but Bucky can’t bring herself to be anything but glad of it, fiercely and utterly glad. As of 09:00 she’ll be Bucky Barnes again, enlisted under her maiden name to help stave off investigations, but right now she’s completely and utterly Bucky Rogers, and screw anyone who calls her anything else.

She rolls out of bed, gets the coffee started and cracks the eggs Patty’d snuck her from Ma and Daddy’s. She’s about to get three squares a day, but Steve isn’t, especially without her there to keep an eye on him; she pulls out the bacon Father O’Malley gave her after her last Confession, when he told her he was proud of her for wanting to serve and didn’t make her say a single Hail Mary for lying to the recruitment center. By the time Steve’s up and dressed, she’s got a real breakfast ready for him, and they eat in companionable silence.

It’s not until Bucky gets up to wash the dishes that Steve wraps a hand around her wrist, says, “I can do it, Buck. You’d better go.”

And she can’t show up at the train station with a rash from Steve’s stubble, so she kisses him once, quickly, and lets the night before stand as their good-bye.

“Write me,” Steve orders, and Bucky nods.

“As often as I can.”

“Me too.” He gives her a half-smile, presses his lips to her cheek. “I love you, Jamesina Buchanan Rogers. You go whip those other recruits into shape, and I’ll come join you in no time.”

“Steve—”

“Go on,” he says, “Get.”

Bucky swallows, hefts her bag over her shoulder, and even though he didn’t make her promise to do it, she obeys her husband.

She goes.


	4. Chapter 4

_It’s not all bad, though, if you don’t mind running in full gear through mud and rain first thing in the morning. At least they let us shoot things. . .”  
-Excerpt from _ An Epistolary War: the Private Correspondence of Sgt. Bucky Barnes _, Dec., 1943 (exact date unknown), Hamilton, Nigel, Random House, 1985_

The calisthenics Bucky could take or leave, to be honest. She knows she needs to be in shape—they all do—before they ship out, which is what keeps her going, but crawling under barbed wire while trying to keep her rifle dryer than her body is not exactly what she’d call a good time.

Her rifle, though.

Her rifle is a thing of beauty.

It sings in her hands. Her rough, calloused hands that scrubbed other people’s floors and toilets and rubbed Steve’s back when he threw up and dug into his sides when they had sex, hold her rifle steady and firm and make it shine even in the middle of the dirt and the stink. She gets top scores in marksmanship, over and over, and takes her rifle back to barracks after and cleans it, careful and slow. 

They only have to hit a body at 400 meters, but Bucky can do better than that. 

Daddy raised her like a soldier, after all.

It’s the shooting that gets her promoted, her ability to look through a scope and see tiny details, bars on a shoulder or oak leaves or wings. But it doesn’t hurt that the men—boys, most of them, barely older than Patty whatever they say—feel comfortable coming to her for advice, or a friendly ear.

She gives them cigarettes, because she never picked up smoking, couldn’t afford to around Steve’s lungs, and then just couldn’t afford to period, and bumps their shoulders and tells them everything’s shit, and for some reason it makes them laugh.

Dugan’s made corporal, but it doesn’t stop him from being an idiot, and Bucky tells him so. He can wear a bowler all he wants at home, but sewing a chevron on doesn’t make it a uniform, and it sure as hell doesn’t make it a helmet.

“Not much in your head worth protecting, I guess, you dum-dum,” she says, the fourth time she sees him in it.

“Thanks, Barnes.” He doesn’t take a cigarette, chomping down instead on a thick cigar. “Nice to know you’ll have my back, Jimmy-boy.”

This time she does more than gently bump his shoulder. “How many times I gotta tell you it’s Bucky?”

“I dunno, Sarge. How many times you gonna call me out on what the hell clothes I wear? You ain’t my ma, or my girl.”

“Nah, I’m just the one the Keller yells at when the company looks sloppy.”

“Captain Keller,” Dugan says, and Bucky rolls her eyes. There’s no good way that sentence can end.

“Captain Keller,” she agrees.

Dugan pulls a flask out of his pocket, offers her a sip.

“To the Captain!”

Bucky grins, nearly snorts up the whiskey. “So you got a girl back home?”

“Nah. I ain’t one of you poor slobs with a ring on one hand and a ball and chain on the other. Tying me down would be a disservice to the ladies, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s not all bad, though. Being married.”

“Sure, Sarge. Whatever keeps your bed warm at night.”

Bucky’s been around her brothers, and the men in Basic, long enough to laugh. “Right now, that’s my right hand. If you know what _I_ mean.”

Dugan takes another long pull on his flask, then tucks it away. “I might have an idea. But I ain’t ready to say one way or another. After all, we’re more than halfway there. I can almost taste leave already. Figure I’ll go to New York, since we’re shipping out from there, and have me a time in your big old city. Meet all those lovely ladies whose menfolk are gone, and maybe use a lot more than my hand. Maybe get a little something to warm me all the way to England.”

“The Expo should be up and running by then. World of the future, and all that.” Bucky smooths over her latest letter from home, Steve’s painfully neat handwriting, over-exaggerated, the way he writes when he’s trying to remember not to fall into chicken-scratch that even twenty years’ experience doesn’t help Bucky decipher.

“I gotta be honest, Sarge,” Dugan says, hopping to his feet. “I ain’t none too excited about the world in our future.”

“Guess there’s some brains in that head of yours after all,” Bucky tells him. “Course, maybe that means you should go about protecting them with an actual helmet.”

“Maybe,” Dugan says, “but I doubt it.”

* * *

Keller’s the kind of brass Daddy used to rail about, but their Lieutenant, Daniels, isn’t half bad. A little green, but they all are, and he relies on the sergeants to do most of the talking to the men.

All in all, she figures it could be worse, a lot worse, and while Keller’s regulation-strict and looking for parade level perfection when they’re exhausted and covered in mud and sweat, at least he’s not stupid. Bucky writes Steve that she has high hopes of surviving more than one week of combat, all things being equal.

Steve writes back that he’s still 4-F, four times over now.

“What’s eating Barnes?” Robinson whispers, that night, voice not half as quiet as he seems to think it is.

“Mail call,” Hardy says. “The wife must be busting his chops or something.”

“Or _something_.” 

Dugan hits both of them upside the head before Bucky has to say anything. “You numbnuts better watch your mouths.” He lights a cigar, again, she has no idea where he even hides them, the number of surprise inspections Keller springs on them. “Talk up your own girls all you want, but keep your dirty little minds out of the sergeant’s bedroom.”

Robinson kicks at the wall, looking like nothing so much as the sulky schoolboy he must’ve been just a few months back. “Didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Good,” Dugan says. “Then you don’t have to say it again, do you?”

“Thanks,” Bucky tells him later, when they’re eating what purports to be food. 

Dugan shrugs, keeps his head tucked low over his liver and onions. “I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid, you know? Married ladies deserve their privacy, in my book.” He pauses, shovels more food in before adding, “and so do crackshots who could take my eye out from halfway across the base.”

Bucky eats her dinner, tries not to wince thinking how much better it’d be if she’d cooked it herself, how much worse if she’d been stuck at work and Steve’d had to get their food on the table. “Thanks anyway,” she tells him.

* * *

They get a few weeks leave at home before their orders come in, and Bucky runs up four flights of stairs with her duffle slung over one shoulder, too anxious to see Steve to notice the weight. He’s not home yet, of course he’s not, but that just means she has time to try to look like a wife instead of a soldier.

She doesn’t want to worry over the hall bathroom, over neighbors, so she heats up water on the stove, scrubs herself as best she can. It’s strange, not wearing bindings after weeks of having it night and day; her breasts ache, and feel bigger than she remembered, more sensitive to the air and the soft, damp flannel.

She can’t wear her Sunday dress to church anymore—can’t risk anyone from the army recognizing her—so she puts it on now, along with the gold locket that was Mom’s, and the pearl earrings Daddy gave her when she turned sixteen. The screwbacks hurt, it’s been that long since she dressed up, but she wants to look perfect for Steve. She’s tanned from days in the sun, and muscled where she used to be soft, but she can still put a dress on and pinch her cheeks and there’s a tube of victory red lipstick in her dresser. 

The icebox is fairly devoid of food, but she manages to scrounge up a meal, and makes a mental note to make sure it’s stocked before she ships out. Mama’s still not talking to her, but Patty’ll sneak over, if she asks, and bother Steve about it. He’s a good kid, that way, even if his letters still hint at wanting to join up himself.

The click of the key in the lock draws her up short, just as she’s putting two plates on the table. Steve takes two steps into the room, then stumbles backwards from the force of Bucky’s hug. She should be more careful, she knows that, but she can’t help it, she needs his arms around her, needs to breathe him in, drop her head to his shoulder, bony but strong, and hear his voice, welcoming her home.

Steve kisses her cheek, her ear, tilts her face towards him so he can kiss her mouth and stroke her lips with his thumb. “Hiya, Buck.”

“Hi.”

He laughs, low and warm, and tightens his arms. “I missed you too, sweetheart. You dress up just for me?”

Bucky nods, tucks her face back against his neck. He runs a hand down her back, inches the bottom of her dress up just enough to skim his hands over her thighs, where her garters end. She shudders, wants to pull his tie off and slip a hand between the buttons on his shirt, to feel his skin under her fingers, but—”Dinner’ll go cold.”

“I am hungry,” Steve murmurs, kissing her neck.

“Steve.”

He slides his hand higher, unbuttons her suspender. “We can heat it back up in the oven later?”

“You’re too—” Steve squeezes her ass, making her gasp, “—skinny.”

“Getting nice ‘n thick right now, honey, just for you.”

She says his name again, aiming for reproachful but clearly missing the mark, not enough heat in her voice or the wrong kind of heat entirely. Steve walks her backwards, brushes the curtain aside and she sighs, gives up on arguing and attacks his clothes instead.

“Missed you,” Steve whispers, over and over, kisses it into her thighs, her stomach, her breasts. “Bucky,” he says, kissing up her arms and under her chin, again and again. He slides inside her like it’s been no time at all and an eternity since they were together, and she rolls her hips up to meet him, desperate already.

Steve groans, his thrusts speeding up. “Bucky, Bucky, god, sweetheart.”

“Steve,” she cries, clinging to him, arms sliding up his waist to his shoulders. “Oh, Steve, please.”

He pushes a hand between them, rubs back and forth and it’s been so long, she falls, almost at once, into climax. Steve stays in her another few beats, but by the time she emerges from the haze of pleasure, he’s already slipped out and is resting between her legs, head on her breasts.

“How about that sandwich?”

Bucky hits him, and Steve laughs, stretches up to kiss her. “How long do I have you for?”

She wants to say forever, to say till the end of the line, like they promised, but that’s not what he’s asking and anyway, she can’t say when the line will end, now. “Few weeks, at most. Gotta check in every day for my orders.”

“Alright,” Steve says, and twists her nipple between his fingers. “Better make hay while the sun shines.”

“Oh, is that what they call it now?” Bucky arches into his hand.

“Oh, that’s what they call it.”

They don’t get to dinner until close to ten, but she can’t bring herself to mind, and Steve certainly doesn’t seem to care. In the morning he wakes her up pressing back inside her, and it’s all she can do not to walk funny when they go to church, Steve in his suit and Bucky in her dress uniform.

Jack’s there, in his blues, and when he and Patty sit with them her parents give in. “Sergeant, huh?” Daddy says after, claps her on the shoulder, and Ma invites them home for dinner.

She doesn’t want to leave them, but even so, it’s kind of nice that they’re there to leave.

* * *

The weeks fly by faster than she’d braced for, and slower all at the same time. Flashes of Steve seem to last forever, of laughing and kissing and his fingers, rolling a stocking down her calf, careful not to snag it since they’re so expensive now. Then she blinks, and it’s half a day gone by, and that much closer to the boat and war.

Jack ships out before her, off to the PTO. They go out the night before he leaves, her and Steve and Jack, and it takes all three of them to roll back home again after. She wants to hug him, to kiss his cheek and beg him to be careful, but she’s not his sister these days, so she claps him on the back and reminds him to write, and to give the Japs hell for her.

“You just worry ‘bout them Krauts,” Jack says, shaking her hand.

“We’ll get ‘em whipped.” 

Daddy slides an arm around Mama’s waist and squeezes. “Be home by Christmas, you’ll see.”

“Yes, sir!” Jack whips off a salute, gives Mama a kiss and ruffles Patty’s hair, nods at Steve and then he’s gone, and pretty soon it’s gonna be Bucky’s turn.

She doesn’t want to go.

Steve nudges her, and Bucky bumps him back before remembering they’re in public, they’re visible and she’s in uniform and they can’t be anything more than good friends. 

It’s this thought, more than anything, that makes her arrange a double date for two nights later. The girls are nice—Connie worked at the garment factory with Bucky before she was fired—and more than willing to help a fellow Brooklyn bum make good.

“Both my brothers are on the line,” Bonnie tells her.

Bucky has to promise them dancing after the Fair, but it’s been months since she and Steve were able to do much of anything, other than Jack’s farewell, and she’s earning a lot more now, too.

“When I said I wanted to dance with my wife,” Steve grumbles. 

Bucky dabs harder with the Mercurochrome, ignoring his wince. “People who are too dumb to listen to five different doctors tell them they can’t afford to fight, and go get beat up in back-alleys instead of meeting their wives at the talkies, don’t get to complain.”

“That’s a very specific hypothetical.”

“ _You’re_ a very specific hypothetical.”

“C’mon, Buck.” Steve sets his hands on her waist, pulls her in closer between his legs. “Can’t I get you to myself tonight?”

“Course you can.” Bucky kisses his forehead. “After we take the girls dancing.”

* * *

Steve gets home late, when Bucy’s just about given up and decided he was arrested by MPs. “Hey sweetheart, you should be asleep. Big day tomorrow.”

Bucky fixes him with a look, and his shoulders drop.

“Were the girls mad?”

“That’s not the point, Steve.”

“We can still dance, you and me. Must be something on the radio.”

There isn’t, which is how Bucky ends up spending the hour between one and two, the morning she’s supposed to ship out, swaying in her husband’s arms while he hums _The Way You Look Tonight_ off-key.

It’s that feeling she takes with her, the next day, when she’s back in uniform and clapping her family on the back, when she’s on the ship, passing out pills and checking all her men are present and accounted for, when Steve and her parents and Patty are indistinguishable from all the other faces fading into the background. 

_They do their level best to keep us from having time to miss home,_ she writes Steve from England, _but it doesn’t work. I’ve been missing you since before I shipped out. I’ve been missing you since the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, it feels like. Nothing’s been the same since then. With the war, and Sean gone, and—I never really thought about going to Europe. Ma always wanted to go back, visit the old country, her uncles and aunts and cousins, but I just wanted you._

_Seems like you’re all I’ve ever wanted, really._

_Now—I still want you. More than anything. I want you safe. I want you at home, because it won’t be any home without you there. I want—it’s loud here. Seems strange to complain about that, when we come from New York City, but it is. It’s loud, and everything’s just different enough to set my teeth on edge, and every night we pull the blackout curtains, pray the bombs won’t hit us. The blitz has pretty much been over for a while now, years, but the scars are still here, and I don’t think the fear of attack’s going to fade anytime soon. That’s just here, on friendly soil. When they send us over . . ._

_I keep thinking of my last night, of dancing in our apartment, holding you and being held. I dream of your arms around me and I wake to drills and surprise inspections._

_I miss you._

_I love you._

She wants to write about how scared she is, about how the men look who’re in town on leave: bloodied, beaten, with a gaze that won’t meet her eyes. They pound the beer a little too hard, and laugh a little too loud, and she’s scared that in a few months’ time she’ll be back here, one of them, and she’s scared that in a few months’ time she’ll be dead.

_You sing off-key, still, you know that? I’ve given up trying to tell you. I’ve given up wanting it to change. I love your stupid, off-key voice, and the murmur of words in my ear, and the way you look at me, in the dark of our bedroom, when we should be asleep. Remember when we were kids, and I told you the fireworks were for your birthday? Your face in the red and blue explosions, the sheer happiness, was worth all the Hail Marys I had to say next confession. You were so sore when you learned the truth, too, but it was worth it, for how happy you’d been._

_Write me when you can, as often as you can, and don’t forget to eat. Keep going to Sunday dinner with my folks; Patty needs someone to remind him war is no place for a kid. Ma promised to feed you up, too. Don’t shake your head at me, you know you’ll forget otherwise. Can’t have you getting skinnier, you’d melt away to nothing and then where would I be?_


	5. Chapter 5

_Of course, war changed her. Before the war Barnes, like many women, framed her life in terms of her husband; her entire existence, almost from childhood, was geared around his happiness. Suddenly, he was the_ last _person she could think about. Even if she didn’t put herself first (and surviving accounts from the men who served under her before Captain America marched onto the scene indicate her survival ranked well below their own in her actions) 1, she had a company of soldiers to worry about. The death of Captain Frederick Keller early in the Italian campaign scarred his men far more than Barnes’ letters from boot camp would have suggested possible, but the death of Private Thomas Robinson seemed to truly drive home the realities of war.2 Barnes stopped writing about battle, about injuries, about conditions in or out of foxholes. Instead, her letters were peppered with humorous anecdotes that did little to portray her own selflessness in combat, or how she had already been scarred by her experiences.3 On the other hand, Corporal Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan was frank, both in the letters he wrote home at the time, and in his interviews since the war, about Barnes’ contributions (e.g., “Buck saved my head again last night. Almost enough to make a fellow think of wearing a helmet. Damned fine sergeant—not a man jack among us who’d be alive today if not for Barnes.”)4  
-excerpt from _Sergeant America: How Bucky Barnes Changed the Social Contract for Women in the World War II Generation _, Joreen, Random House, 1970_

Reading Hemingway has not prepared her for this.

It has not prepared her for the mud, everywhere, constant and itching, nor the cold comfort of a foxhole, with one or two men huddled together for warmth. Cigarettes smell like safety now, far enough from the enemy lines that the men can light up and not worry about giving away their position. Bucky’s given up and started smoking them, herself. It’ll be hell if she goes home to Steve, but there are so much worse hells than that, and she’s smack in the middle of one.

Nothing in _For Whom The Bell Tolls_ prepared her for Tommy, falling dead at the base of her nest, or the way his breath gurgled in the sudden silence.

The divisions are mixed to hell and back, everything’s been fubar for ages, and Bucky shares her foxhole with Dugan and a radio operator named Jones, whom she had to fight her CO to keep. “He belongs with the Negros,” Ingram argued.

“Sure,” Bucky’d said, “if you want to cede them the best damn radio op this side of the Atlantic.”

Ingram gave in, on condition Bucky take responsibility for him. Bucky takes responsibility for all her men, so it’s not really an issue.

Dugan insists on sharing the foxhole, which makes it tight, and still calls her Jimmy, which makes it frustrating, but there are worse things to worry about.

 _We still haven’t seen Steve,_ Patty’s last letter says, _and Dad and I had to go round last Saturday to clear your things out of the apartment. It’s all piled in your old bedroom, pretty much. We sold the furniture ‘cause Ma said it wasn’t worth paying storage costs._

The letter runs on from there, talking about Jack, and how their Dad got sent to jail for punching out a drunk who was running off at the mouth over the war, and some new bond tour with that Captain America who’s coming to New York City. Bucky reads it all, but it takes a week or so for her to get past that one paragraph. Steve’s been writing regular, but his letters are half black lines, censored out by someone, and despite admitting he hasn’t seen her folks he won’t (or can’t) tell her where he is.

 _Still 4-F?_ she wrote him, just two days ago.

_You know me, _he replied._ _

“Bad news from home, Sarge?” Jones asks, finally, when she’s spent a week shooting Krauts during the day and picking at cold spam and ignoring everyone at night. 

“Goddamnit, Jones, stop calling me Sarge.” 

“Bad news from home,” Dugan says. He nudges her, hands over a cigar. “Trouble with the spouse?” 

Bucky grunts, but she also lights the cigar and takes a long drag. On her right, Jones exhales. 

“Lost the apartment,” she says, after a minute. 

“Your pay ain’t getting sent home?” 

“Oh it’s getting sent. She just ain’t there to receive it. My folks had to go clear everything out, and she ain’t said shit about—” She breaks off, for a swallow of the brandy they liberated from an abandoned farmhouse a few nights back. “Fuck.” 

“Women,” Jones mutters, and Dum-Dum chokes on his liquor. 

Bucky snorts. “Thought all the ladies swooned over college men.” 

“Sure,” Jones says, grinning. “And then they notice the other swooning gals, and ask you who those tramps are, and why does your collar smell like someone else’s perfume, and was that you their brother saw dancing with some trollop and listening to jazz music last Saturday when you claimed to be working. Then they call you a heartless bastard, slap you and throw gin in your face and the whole damn bar applauds, and you take the subway home at 2 in the morning in a sopping wet wool suit and your mama won’t talk to you in church the next day.” 

Dugan hands the brandy bottle over. “Damn, Sarge, and you call _me_ a dum-dum?” 

“You’re both dumb,” Bucky tells him. “You’re stuck here getting shot at, ain’t you?” 

“Amen,” Jones says, and they pass the bottle round until its empty. 

* * * 

“Hey, Sarge,” Hardy calls when they get back to base, “you coming to the film tonight?” 

“I dunno, is it still _This Is the Army_? Think I’ve seen that one three times already.” 

“Nah.” Hardy grins. “We got us the new Captain America.” 

“Oh, _Captain America_. Well in that case,” Bucky says, lighting a cigarette, “I definitely ain’t going.” 

The men laugh, and they all disperse to their bunks. Captain America, whoever the schmuck is in real life, looks kind of like Steve would if his body matched the size of his heart, and sounds like Steve would if you dug into his brain with a scalpel and removed his entire personality. He carries a _shield_ , like that wouldn’t make him _more_ visible to snipers, and he can’t act for beans, and Bucky’s the last person to make assumptions about a guy based on his looks, but he sure does pass for someone who oughta be over here fighting. 

He still manages to make Bucky homesick, though. 

* * * 

She has a meeting with Captain Daniels and Ingram the next day, along with Daniels’ other Lieutenants and Sergeants. Away from the front, no one wants to acknowledge the snafu that _is_ the front, the way all the companies end up mixed together and the wrong people are watching each other’s backs. The way it can lead to watching your own backs. The way that gets men killed. 

Bucky keeps a sharp eye on her own people, but there’s only so much she can do. She’s not Ingram; she’s not an officer. 

“The brass is worried about morale,” Daniels says, and it’s all she can do to keep from laughing. Haywood, sergeant in the 3rd Platoon, _does_ laugh, and to give Daniels credit he joins in. “I know. But we’re supposed to order all the men to the new Captain America, to boost their blood. Tell them Major Vicks sent the order, will you?” 

“Sir,” Bucky says. Daniels raises an eyebrow, and she sighs. “It ain’t gonna make them go, sir.” 

“Who wants them to?” 

Ingram says, “Vicks does, for starters.” 

“Vicks is a major pain in my ass.” 

Bucky and the other sergeants immediately break into chorus. “They say that in the army, you must avoid the Brass. At least when Nazis shoot you, the pain ain’t in your ass.” 

“Alright, sergeants.” 

“Gee Cap,” Bucky says, “I wanna go home.” 

Daniels grinds his cigarette under his boot. “Better go to the movies instead. They don’t come packed in a pine box.” 

* * * 

They get sent back to London for a week, and Bucky takes the men out for a round of drinks. “Get ‘em while they’re free, boys, ‘cause they won’t be for long.” 

Dugan laughs, but it’s the kind of laugh he didn’t have in basic, and the first toast is to Tommy, buried somewhere in France. “Poor kid never saw it coming.” 

Bucky did. 

Not Tommy, exactly, not the way the blood gurgled in his mouth as he fell, the soft whump of the leaves when his body his the ground, but. 

She wants to find Ernest Hemingway and shake him. 

She wants to shake Dugan, damn his hide. What business does he have toasting dead men when they’re still alive with a war to get through? When the boys’ve gotta go back to battle in a few days, and Bucky has to perch in a tree, or a bell tower, or high grass, and watch ‘em? Seems like a woman can’t ever escape waiting for her men, even when she’s right there in battle beside them—and Bucky isn’t, half the time. Squirreled up a tree ain’t the same, whatever Dugan says about her being a good luck charm. 

Bucky bites back a scowl; raises her glass instead. “Here’s to Keller,” she says. “May he be as much of an S.O.B. to the devil as he was to us poor sods on earth.” 

“Here’s to you, Jimmy,” Dugan counters. “Best sniper in the 107th, and a damn fine sergeant to boot.” 

“Here’s to your corporal’s stripes; may they land on smarter shoulders.” 

“Here’s to Ingram; may he learn quickly and have good cover until then.” 

“Here’s to Daniels, the best lieutenant-turned-captain in this man’s army.” 

“Here,” Jones breaks in, “is to Captain America. Let’s hope he scares the hell out of the Nazis, ‘cause he sure doesn’t do much for me.” 

Bucky laughs. “You heard him, boys. Let’s hear it for Captain America.” 

* * * 

London is cold and wet and Italy is cold and snowy, and Bucky’s not sure which is worse. There’re bombed out buildings everywhere, and the Italian countryside has abandoned farms, cows and geese let loose and starving, cellars with wine bottles and scraps of food that couldn’t be taken by fleeing civilians. They find a henhouse, chickens gone but a pile of eggs there for the taking, and cook up a mess of scrambled eggs one day. The next week Dugan finds coffee beans and old bread; Bucky cuts off the mold and it’s hardly noticeable anyway, once they’ve spread spam on it. She wouldn’t feed it to Steve at his skinniest, but Steve isn’t here. 

On the other hand, London is full of stiff-lipped Brits by day, going grimly about their daily lives, and drunken revelers by night, making merry lest tomorrow they die. Bucky gets pulled into dances by girls with victory rolls and red lips, seams drawn up the backs of their calves and two of them kiss her, before she can put them off. 

“C’mon Sarge, live a little.” 

“I’m married,” Bucky says, wiping at her mouth to get the lipstick off. “Can’t you see the ring?” 

That fixes one of them, but the other tosses her red curls. “You’re wife can’t see it all the way over here,” she replies, wrapping her fingers round Bucky’s tie. “She can’t see when you take it off, either.” 

“I can,” Bucky tells her. 

“Spoilsport.” 

Dugan comes to her rescue, slinging an arm over her shoulder and demanding she come toast “the brave figs that gave their lives so we wouldn’t starve in the wilds of Rome.” 

Bucky shoves him. “It wasn’t Rome, you dum-dum.” 

“Come toast anyway. Let Jones here have a turn on the dance floor.” 

Jones takes the girl for a spin, though most of it happens _off_ the dance floor and behind the doors of some other establishment entirely. He tells them all about it when they’re hunkered down under fire, in the rain, with the mud and the leaves and the chill creeping up their spines. It’s twilight, that hour when it’s still light enough to be shooting, but just dark enough Bucky’s vision starts to go, and she feels most helpless. 

It was twilight when Tommy— 

“And let me tell you, man, those were some gams,” Jones says, and Bucky almost laughs despite herself. 

She has a sudden stab of homesickness, right there in her foxhole with Jones on her left and Dugan on her right and Kraut bullets over her head. Steve put up with an awful lot, with her temper and her short hair and she can’t help but think how horrified he’d be, if he saw her now. 

He fights clean, her Stevie, and there ain’t nothing clean about war. 

There ain’t nothing clean about Bucky, neither, and she doesn’t just mean the dirt that’s taken up permanent residence under her fingernails and between her toes. She shot five men when they weren’t looking, yesterday. Five men who had no idea they were even in danger, until the bullets hit home, one for each of them. Two days before that she slit a man’s throat. He’d stumbled on their foxhole in the dark, couldn’t find his camp, and before he even had the chance to raise his arms and surrender Dugan pulled him down and Bucky knifed him. 

Funny how come morning, his blood looked the same as everyone else’s. 

But thinking that way’s how you end up like Jeffries, who put down his gun one day and just wouldn’t pick it up, not even when they were outnumbered three to one. Parker died waiting for back-up, and Jeffries lived to hit the stockade, or Leavenworth, or Bellevue; wherever they send men who lost their comrades and their minds. Bucky can’t afford that kind of thinking; if she falls apart the boys will too. 

_You just study your Bible,_ she writes Patty when he talks again of coming to join her in a few years time. _There’s gotta be someone to pick up the pieces when all us johnnies come marching home again._

* * * 

When she was in basic, Bucky looked around one day and realized she’d gotten used to the rhythm of army life. The runs that had started so awful, damp and muddy, were still miserable, but her legs didn’t ache the way they used to, and the gear on her back wasn’t as heavy a load. The food was bad, but it was regular. Everything was regular, or regulated, and she fell into it without realizing, ready to wake up when reveille called in the morning and dropping into an easy—but not exhausted—sleep when taps rang in the night. 

That didn’t happen in Europe. There’s no rhyme or reason to their days, and no surety about their nights. Sleeping wedged against the dirt on one side and Dugan on the other brings no safety, not when the enemy could be creeping past the sentries to kill them where they lay. She sleeps anyway, because she’d learn to grab her rest when and where she got it, but she isn’t _used_ to it. 

Sometimes she stands watch, and sometimes she doesn’t, and sometimes they sleep on the ground, and sometimes they find crumbling buildings, and always, underneath everything, is the persistent fear of death. 

If only she knew Steve was okay, she’d take it, but what few letters of his got through are so heavily censored these days they’re almost unreadable. She wonders if he got hers, carefully written to remove any hint they were spouses, while still trying to tease out what he was doing. He’s supposed to be in Brooklyn, Steve is, working and breathing with lungs that maybe don’t always work quite right, but at least don’t have a bullet hole in them, and enjoying Sunday dinners with her folks, and being as safe as any mook in Brooklyn _can_ be, when he has stubbornness a mile wide and ten times as long, and a tendency to get knocked around in alleys and empty lots. 

It’s for Steve she is here, and he isn’t supposed to be _grateful_ , he wouldn’t be Steve if he were, but he could at least be somewhere he could tell her about, doing things he could tell her about, instead of adding to the pile of worry she already has. 

The army keeps sending her new recruits—well, not just her, the whole company—and she hates it. Hates them. Tommy had died trying to keep them _safe_. Keller, damn his hide, he’d had her back. Peters had lost a leg shoving Dugan out of the way of a grenade. 

Jeffries had frozen, and a good man died because of it. 

They have no business sending her boys—eighteen- and nineteen-year-old _boys_ —who are as much a liability as having no one at all. Worse sometimes, ‘cause Bucky is the sergeant and it’s her job to look out for them, especially when they don’t have close friends in the platoon to do it for her. 

But send the boys they do, and Bucky has to train ‘em up quick, before the Krauts get the training of ‘em, or the killing. So she’s already in a bad mood when Daniels says they’re headed to Azzano. 

He dies the next day, not three feet from Bucky’s right, and Ingram with him. Bucky sees them fall, just like Tommy only not quite, because she’s down there with them, in the thick of it this time, and the waves keeps coming, and coming, and the 107th keeps falling before them. 

She sees Daniels fall, with his gun still clenched in his hands. She sees Ingram, kneeling to feel for a pulse, to call a medic, topple over him. 

She sees the ground beneath them turn red. 

And then she sees a tank crest a ridge, and blue beam of light turns a Nazi into nothing—just, nothing. Air. A scream and a burst of blue and another Nazi down, but the tank isn’t anything she’s seen from the Allies, and after it clears the Jerries it turns towards her men—her boys—and her. 

Bucky raises her hands, and surrenders. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Hetrez](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hetrez/pseuds/hetrez) and [Schuyler](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Schuyler) for the last minute beta.

_”You’re animals, all of you! Look what you’re doing to these poor boys; doesn’t it make you ashamed? Sure, you can work us to death. You can whip us and starve us, but you can’t beat us. You can’t beat the American spirit, don’t you see? These boys, dying here in your work camps, they’re_ free _. And freedom’s going to come for you too, Herr Schmidt. Just you wait and see. Freedom’s going to knock down your front door. It’s going to kick you, for every boy you’ve kicked, in this camp and all the others. It’s going to tear through Germany, and Austria, and Italy, and France. It comes from America, from Canada, from England, and that freedom, Herr Schmidt, that freedom_ can’t _be stopped. No, Corporal, it’s alright. They can hurt me all they like, but they can’t hurt democracy. They can’t hurt liberty. Just you wait, boys. Just you wait.”_  
-Katherine Hepburn as Bucky  
The Captain’s Bride _, 1947_

They’re forced marched at tank and gunpoint to the nearest train tracks, then shoved into cattle cars, with stale air and blood stains. It smells like vomit, like bile, and Bucky doesn’t want to know how these cars were used last, or when. There’s barely room to stand without elbowing someone, and she ends up wedged between Dugan, Jones, and a British major who gives her the side-eye. “You alright, Sergeant?”

“Just peachy, Sir.”

He looks ready to say something else, but Dugan shifts, pushes a little to shove Bucky against a wall and insert himself between them. 

Jones asks, “Is there a problem here, Major?”

“No, Private.” The major looks them up and down. “No problem on my end.” He turns, claps another man on the shoulder. “Buck up now, lads. We may be in for a rotten time of it at first, but it’ll all turn out in the end.”

Bucky snorts.

They’ve been herded into a train that could maybe hold half their number comfortably, by some new German cult with futuristic weapons that’d make Howard Stark’s flying car weep in shame; she’s pretty sure “rotten” is understating the matter.

“Hey.” Dugan nudges her, surprisingly gently given the rocking of the train and the general lack of space. “Isn’t ‘buck up’ your line, Buck?”

“Timothy,” she tells him, “go to hell.”

“I think we are,” Jones says.

“Right.” Bucky takes a deep breath, holds it for a count of ten. With Ingrams down, she’s the ranking officer in their platoon, and with Daniels down—well, she doesn’t see any of the other looeys anyway. Vicks, of course, is nowhere to be found. “107th! Charlie Company, 2nd platoon, sound-off!”

“That was an impressive bellow, Bucky.” Dugan cranes his neck. “I think it’s just us, though, at least in this car. The rest of the cattle, who knows?”

Around the car, other sergeants are making similar calls, and looking for officers to report to. Major Englishman is the only one Bucky sees, though to be fair she’s penned against the wall by her own men. 

All two of them.

“Keep your eyes peeled for Carwood or Kaplan.”

Jones shakes his head. “The Krauts got Kaplan, and Carwood caught a grenade trying to pull him back.”

“Lynch?”

“Last I saw he was bent over Lummock, calling for a medic,” Dugan says.

With Ford sent to the hospital two days ago, and Russo still there, with a bad case of pneumonia, that pretty much does it for C-Company. Three of them, POWs, and shit, her ma’s gonna get a telegram a few days from now. 

_Your son, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, missing in action, presumed captured_. . .

She hasn’t heard from Jack in a while, but everyone knows the PTO’s a shit show, fubar from start to finish. At least Patty’s safe. One child, still at home. 

Whatever happens, she’s gotta hold out for them. For Ma, and Daddy, and her baby brother, who wants to be a priest and believe in the best of people.

If only she knew where Steve was.

If only she knew he was warm, and fed, and. If she could just hear his heartbeat, one last time, the slightly disrupted rhythm of it; the hint of wheezing that stays in his lungs all winter; his head, resting on her breast as they lay in bed. 

There are enough people shoved into the car that if she closes her eyes, it’s hot enough to be Brooklyn in the early summer. She can almost feel Steve’s hair, sliding through her fingers as she pushes it back off his forehead; the press of his temple to her chin when they dance; the weight of his arms around her, holding her close.

The first time he took her dancing, he was afraid to touch her, almost. She had to take his right hand from where he grasped the side of her dress, barely touching the fabric let alone Bucky, and plant it square in the middle of her back. He looked up at her, and squinted, and hardly looked like her Steve at all, he was that nervous.

“Don’t run away from me now,” she’d said, and he’d straightened right up, lifted his chin the way Bucky always did, when her spine felt like jelly. 

“Don’t you know yet I don’t run, Bucky Barnes?”

“I’m counting on it, Stevie.”

He’d made a face, because he was fifteen and no one had called him Stevie since he was seven and told his mom it was a name for a little boy, “and I’m big in _age_ , Mommy.” He’d also taken her right hand in his left one, and led her carefully around the dance floor, Bing Crosby crooning in the background, “ _You’re getting to be a habit with me_.”

“Am I your habit, Stevie?”

“Nah,” Steve’d said, “habits get taken for granted. You, you’re my girl.”

She’d kissed him that night, for the first time. Sixteen, with her hair in brown curls just made for Steve’s fingers to weave through. She hadn’t learned yet how to mold her body to his, how much to bend her knees or curve her shoulders. He’d stood on tiptoe, outside her door, and Sean had leaned out the window to catcall them, because he was thirteen and terrible.

Steve’d slipped away with the rose she’d had pinned to her dress, and years later she’d found it pressed between the pages of _Transporting the A. E. F. in Western Europe, 1917–1919_.

Ma probably threw it out, when she packed up their apartment.

 _Please be safe_ , Bucky thinks, not sure if she’s praying to God or to Steve. _Whatever you’re doing, please be safe_. 

* * *

“Gentlemen.” A rat-faced man in glasses greets them when they tumble out of the train, legs still swaying even though the ground’s stopped moving beneath them. “Welcome to Hydra. I am Herr Doctor Zola; I make weapons.” He wipes his glasses; puts them back on his nose. “You are going to help me.”

The men grumble; someone far behind Bucky yells and is instantly set up on by guards.

“If you behave,” Dr. Zola says, “no harm will come to you. If you do not—”

The man is pulled to the front of the crowd, struggling and screaming curses. Once everybody’s watching, the guards hit him with that blue ray, and he disappears. A drop of blue lands near Bucky’s feet.

“Hydra wants to bring order to this world you have disrupted. Disorder is not looked on kindly. You would do well to remember this, I think.”

Zola turns, walks away. 

“We got rights,” Dugan mutters, as the guards shove them into the base. 

“You gonna complain?” Bucky asks. “Let me know, so I can hit you over the head first.”

It’s cold, wherever they are, and there’s a pervasive dampness to everything. They’re put on work teams with whoever was nearest; it’s just luck that Bucky manages to hang on to Dugan and Jones. 

Everything smells of sweat, of gunmetal, and of oil. She keeps sniffing, searching for the scent of powder, but it ain’t there.

Well, it wouldn’t be.

Whatever routine Bucky missed, before, it’s back now with a vengeance. They’re woken early—first light—and given scraps for food, hardly enough to get them through the day. They work through lunch, right until sunset; after, if they haven’t produced enough to please “Herr Doctor.” Then dinner, if you could call it that, and back to their cells for the night.

The days blend together, one after another, and they can’t fight the guards so they take to squabbling with each other, instead.

Dugan claims it passes the time, but Bucky thinks it just plain passes for stupid.

“Ain’t you got enough to do?”

“Aw, Buck.”

“Don’t you aw Buck me, Dum-Dum. You wanna do something for me, you keep your head down and don’t get us shot.”

He grumbles some more, but he shuts up, so Bucky’ll take it. She aches all over, in her shoulders and her back and muscles the army never even knew to poke at. She’s been feeling kinda light-headed; she just wants to lean against the bars, or Dugan’s or Jones’s shoulder, and catch some damned rest.

“I don’t mind the melting pot when it’s our fellas,” Dugan says the next night, because he’s like a bulldog with this shit, “but they gotta put the Japs in here too? Don’t they know we got a war on?”

“I don’t think they care,” Jones says.

* * *

A Canadian is the first from their cell to break. Jennings, she thinks his name is—was. Robert. He claimed to be nineteen, but he was sixteen if he was a day, barely able to break out in peach fuzz and still with that baby fat clinging to his cheeks.

He’s gone now, not even dogtags left, just a splatter of blue, ground into the floor by their boots as they keep working.

Two days later a Frenchie comes down with the ‘flu, or pneumonia, something that keeps him from standing. The guards whisk him off to the isolation ward, wherever that is.

“Don’t be starting a fight now, Buck,” Dugan, says, watching the Frenchman’s feet drag as he’s pulled along.

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it,” Jones says. “None of us _like_ it; we just don’t make the Fritzes know that.”

“Mom—my mother-in-law. She went to an isolation ward, for TB. Not many people come back from there.”  

“No one comes back from this one,” Major Falsworth tells them. “I’ve asked around.”

  Dugan glares, steps between him and Bucky like always. “Sorry, Major, but I don’t recall asking you to be part of this here shindig.”  

“As the ranking officer—”

“We ain’t in the British army. Sir.”

Falsworth clenches his teeth and stalks back to the corner of the cell where the Brits and Aussies have gathered.

“That was fucking stupid,” Bucky says. “Jesus Christ, you’re fucking idiots.”

Jones frowns at her. “We need to keep our heads down—”

“We need to keep our heads _together_. It’s like out there, with the platoon, only we got a whole new platoon now. And fuck it, the Krauts have got all the guns and all the food and all the—all we got is each other, and you idiots want to alienate—” She pulls away, shoves between them to the corner where the other Canadian is huddled with a French Resistance fighter. “You boys surviving?”

“Getting by, sir,” the Canadian says; Bucky rolls her eyes at him.

“I’m a sergeant, kid, don’t sir me.” She sits next to them, one leg curled up under the other. “Name’s Barnes. Bucky.”

“Don Aubert. This here’s Dernier.”

The Frenchman holds his hand out. “Jacques.”

“I got a brother Jack, in the PTO. Hot as hell, according to his letters.”

  “Must be a nice change,” Aubert says. Bucky shrugs. She’s gotten used to the temperature, now. Working all day builds a sweat up, anyway, and it’s not like they don’t have four walls and a roof over head. She’s slept in worse, especially since she got to Europe.

“That idiot who wears a hat instead of a helmet? That’s Dugan, but you can call him Dum-Dum, ‘cause it’s what he is. The private’s Gabe Jones.” She nods at Jacques, adds, “I think he speaks French. Hey, Jones, parlez French?”

Jones and Jacques both wince, but Jones comes over, so that’s a win. “Je parle français; Je m’appelle Gabe Jones.”

“Jacques Dernier.”

The two of them devolve into rapid-fire frog-speak; Bucky has no fucking clue what they’re saying, but they’re talking. She turns her attention back to Aubert, doesn’t react to Dum-Dum’s heavy hand on her shoulder except to elbow him when he finally sits down.

Across the room, the Brits and Aussies glare at them, and there’s a Jap in the far corner, huddled up by himself, but it’s start.

It’s a start.

* * * 

It only gets warmer. This doesn’t make sense, Bucky’s reasonably sure. It’s cold and wet outside, and it should be cold inside too. But it’s not, it’s hot, and she abandons her jacket in their cell one morning, when the guards march them to work. She ends up rolling her sweater sleeves halfway up her arms, too, until Dum-Dum catches her and pushes them back down.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“It’s hot,” Bucky tells him. She swipes her forehead with the back of her arm. “I’m tryin’ to cool down.”

“You just keep yourself covered,” Dum-Dum says. “Where’s your jacket? Shit, are you trying to get yourself killed here?”

Bucky glares at him. “It’s _hot_.”

“It really isn’t.” Jones drapes his jacket over her shoulders, and Dum-Dum starts buttoning it, like she can’t do up a damn jacket or something. She pushes him away. They don’t have time for a squabble, not with the guards wandering through the room, hands on those damn guns.

“Button up, Sergeant,” Falsworth says. “Mustn’t catch your death.” 

Dum-Dum and Jones glare, but Bucky just sighs and does up the damn coat. When they get back to the cell, though, she shoves it off as soon as possible, because the guards don’t give a shit once they’re locked in for the night, and whatever the boys think, it’s hot.

It’s so hot.

She bunches her own jacket up and rests her head on it. If only she could take the sweater off, she’d be so much cooler. Someone rests a hand on her forehead, a big, broad hand so she knows it isn’t Steve. Steve’s not here, anyway. Steve’s not allowed in when she’s sick, just in case. He hangs out on the street, though, and shouts up to Sean for the latest news. Bucky’s not gonna die or anything—it’ll take more than scarlet fever to finish _her_ off, she’s got the Barnes constitution—but it does feel nice, knowing Steve’s down there, haunting the stoop and asking about her.

“Can’t call them,” a voice says, a low rumble she can barely make out. “The isolation ward—”

“I’m fine,” Bucky says. She catches the nearest hand. “I don’t need the doc, Seanie, honest. You tell—” she coughs, long and hard, “—you tell Mama I’ll be fine. Save the money for the baby.”

“Sure, Buck, I’ll tell her. You just rest now.”

“It’s so hot.” She regrets saying it almost before the words’re out of her mouth. Only shirkers complain, and it’s not like they c’n do anything ‘bout the weather. Summers in Brooklyn are—well, hot. She shakes her head a little, and her hands. Her hands are shaking and she doesn’t know why, shivering, but it’s hot. It’s hot.

“You just rest, kid,” Daddy says. Bucky gives him her best smile. His hand is warm against hers, but she can’t let go of it, not just yet. In a minute, when he has to go to bed, but she’d rather be too hot with Daddy there, anyway. She’s his little trooper, he says so, and he’s gonna teach her how to throw punches, and protect herself and Seanie and the baby, and he named her for a president ‘cause she can do anything, even if she is a girl. “Rest,” Daddy says, so she closes her eyes.

She wakes up aching everywhere. The guards are going to come, and feed and water them and send them to work the machines, and she doesn’t think she can do it. It hurts too much: to sit, to move, to breathe.

Jones dabs at her forehead with a wet handkerchief; they must’ve saved the bucket from last night’s dinner, which is just—”You’re not supposed to be the stupid one,” Bucky tells him.

“I thought we were all dumb, Buck, gettin’ shot at and everything.”

Dum-Dum’s in another corner, arguing with just about everyone but the Jap. Their voices are low, furious, the way Daddy gets when he’s so angry he can’t let any of them know. Steve gets loud, louder, shouts at everybody with a voice too big for his body, but Daddy shrinks his anger down and hisses it, and the quieter he is . . .

“Should’a stayed home,” Bucky says, before coughing so long Dum-Dum and Falsworth come over to check on her.

“Pneumonia, if I’m not mistaken.” Falsworth’s hands are gentle as he helps her up, and then he slaps her back to bring up phlegm and she almost misses the look that he gives Dum-Dum.

“Hey.” Dum-Dum’s hand shakes when she grips it. “Someone’s gotta be the first to come back from the isolation ward.”

“Buck—”

“I got a strong constitution. You should’a—” she coughs, sags back against Jones. “You should’a seen how often I kept Steve—”

“No.”

“Someone’s gotta look after Jones. You’ll be the ranking officer. Keep your head down for a change, I know it’s hard with all that swelling but try, for goodness’ sake.”

Dum-Dum shakes his head. “You ain’t going.”

“Try and stop me.”

“You can’t,” Jones says. “Not—not you, Bucky, you know you can’t.”

There’s a shout, and an Australian throws himself at the guard, decks him. He’s gone a minute later, not even, in a flash of blue; the other guards stream into their cell and grab Bucky’s arms. 

“Ain’t nothing I can’t do,” Bucky says. “Hey, Gabe.” She grins at him, holding back a cough by sheer force of will. “It’s gonna be okay,” she tells him. “Promise.”

They drag her out of the cell, down the halls. She can’t keep up, can’t move fast enough, and someone hits her in the back of the head; it’s almost a relief when everything fades to darkness.

* * *

She’s got a cot, and a thin blanket, and someone must come by with water, or food, but mostly she’s hot and cold and it feels like she’s drowning, trying to breathe through all that pressure.

Steve once said asthma was worse than pneumonia, because at least with pneumonia he knew what was wrong, had an anvil on his chest holding his lungs down, but with asthma they were light and free and still not getting him air to breathe.

Bucky just feels like everything that ever went down the wrong pipe is trying to get back up again, now. 

The world is drenched in molasses, everything slow and heavy. She’s sweated through her sheets, and her chest hurts all over, and no one’s come to change the linens or her bandages or anything.

Steve must be at work, must’ve gotten a job, but someone should’ve come to look after her. Patty, Patty sneaks over all the damn time. He’s eleven now, and he needs to start applying himself in school, instead of racing crickets down the aisle, but he doesn’t like his teacher. He spends a lot of time at Bucky and Steve’s, taking twice as long to do his homework because they’ve got the Dodgers game on the radio.

After Steve proposed, when Bucky went home, finally, she told Patty she was going to be getting married, that Steve would be his brother, and Patty’d said, “Ain’t he already?” He’d been angry when he found out she’d be moving in with Steve, ‘stead of the other way round, though. He hadn’t spoken to them for two weeks, until Steve’d had a talk with him, “man to man.”

He should be here, making her sit up more and fussing like their Grandma Barnes and—there should be soup on the stove, the smell of hot chicken broth and onion; Steve can’t cook for beans but Ma would’ve sent Patty over with soup, she always says chicken soup can cure all ills, and what chicken soup can’t fix the Barnes constitution can whip into the ground.

“Hurts,” Bucky says. “Mama, it hurts, so bad.”

She can’t stop coughing, and when she manages to her teeth chatter, which is wrong—too hot for shivering—and she wants. She wants Steve, wants Patty’s little hand, or—

She closes her eyes, tries to sleep.

Mama’s got three other kids to look after, but Daddy’ll check on her before he goes to bed. Daddy always checks.

* * *

“Well, and what have we here? It seems our sick sergeant is better, hm? No more pneumonia, even without penicillin.” 

Bucky struggles upright in the cot. Herr Doctor Zola stares at her, looks her up and down.

“Good,” he says. “Herr Schmidt desires our experiments to go faster. The sergeant will be test subject seventy-three. Bring him, please.”

Her legs buckle when the guards pull her upright, but Bucky locks her knees. She won’t give them the satisfaction of dragging her again, not for as long as she can hold out. It’s cold—she’s lost her jacket—and their boot heels clack on the stone floor. There’s a room with a desk, a map—an examination table.

They shove her on it, strap her down.

“I won’t tell you anything.”

“I haven’t asked.” Zola opens his bag, removes a syringe and a vial of blue fluid. “Though I believe it is traditional to start with your name and rank, yes?” 

She grits her teeth. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. 32557689.”

“Congratulations, Sergeant Barnes.” Zola smiles, plunges the needle into her arm. “The procedure has already started. If all goes well, you are to be the new fist of Hydra!”

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes,” Bucky says. “32557—”

Her blood begins to boil, and the rest of her serial number is lost. Everything inside her burns, and burns, and burns.

“Sergeant,” she whispers, because it hurts too much for anything else. Her face is on fire, her chest. “Sergeant James B-Buchanan Barnes.”

Someone crashes into the room. She can’t see, can’t see anything beyond the burning. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. 3. 2. 5. 5. 7.”

“Bucky?” A face swims into view, almost familiar. She knows that mouth, those eyes. The crook in that nose. “Sweetheart, it’s me. It’s Steve.”

Hands unstrap her, strong, big hands. Long fingers she almost recognizes, and that smile, she knows that smile, knows that look of concern. His face is wrong, except in all the ways it’s right, and his voice. That voice that couldn’t get out a proposal, but murmured endearments against her bare skin. She knows that voice.

Bucky falls against him, can walk but can’t quite hold herself upright, and those arms come around her, warm and safe. He’s taller now, taller than she is, and he wraps a hand around her waist, holds her close against him. He should be home, in Brooklyn, keeping a weather eye on Patty. He should be far away from Hydra, from Europe, from Bucky.

“Buck?”

She looks up, into a face that isn’t quite her husband’s, but couldn’t be anyone else’s if it tried. She can’t help smiling, can’t help choking back a sob.

He’s here, with her. Warm, and big, and _real_.

He’s here.

“Steve.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Laura Kaye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye) for the beta. *mwah*

_CR: Did you know?_  
 _CP: Not a damned clue._  
 _CR: Does it surprise you that the Howling Commandoes kept quiet about it?_  
 _CP: In my experience, soldiers tend to be protective of the men who save their lives._  
 _CR: She wasn’t a man._  
 _CP: Man, woman, or Russian bear, she saved each of their lives, several times over. Some of them, before we’d even heard of Hydra._  
 _CR: If you had known, would you have discharged her?_  
 _CP: What do I care? She wasn’t_ my _wife. If Rogers wanted her safe at home in Brooklyn, he should’ve packed her off there himself. [chuckles] Let me tell you, son, I’d have paid good money to see him try it, too._  
 _-excerpt from an interview with Colonel Chester Phillips, August, 1952, in preparation for_ The Head That Rolls _, Cornelius Ryan, Simon & Schuster, 1953_

She doesn’t realize how _angry_ she is until they reach the treeline and the base explodes behind them. The woods are full of Allied soldiers, half-starved and—Steve is supposed to be—it’s cold. The night air is cold, crisp, and Bucky knows she isn’t feverish anymore, but she’s burning up from the inside and it feels like the velvet she sometimes got to sew back when she worked at the factory—soft and smooth until she rubs the wrong way, then tender to touch and a little rough, like it’s scratching at her skin.

”Bucky?”

There are arms around her, pulling her from Steve, pulling her into a tight hug. Hands on her back, the bristle of a mustache—Dum-Dum. He passes her to Jones, who passes her to Jacques and Falsworth and—the Jap?—and back to Dugan again, who slings an arm over her shoulder and pumps Steve’s hand.

“You may not know it, Cap, but this here’s the best sergeant in the entire U.S. Army you’ve rescued.”

“Dum-Dum—”

“You just tell the nice man thank you, Buck.”

“Call me Steve.” Steve gives Dum-Dum Captain America’s best grin, the one that’d made them all throw popcorn at the old sheet Vick’s had hung up in lieu of a movie screen.

“‘Call me Steve,’ he says. You should’ve seen the man, Bucky, fought his way into the base singled-handed. Killed him some Kraut guards and just tossed us the keys, didn’t he, all, ‘I’m Captain America, I’ve punched Hitler over two hundred times!’”

“I remember when you couldn’t punch anything without breaking your thumb.”

“I was _five_ ,” Steve says.

Jones looks between them. “ _This_ is Rogers?”

“He joined the army.” Bucky shrugs out from under the weight of Dum-Dum’s arm. “Don’t suppose they gave you a compass and a map when they dropped you off?”

“They gave me a transpo—” Steve pulls a bullet-riddled box out of his breast pocket. “Oh.”

“I take it we’re walking back?” Falsworth calls some sergeants over. “We need to find the wounded; pile them into as many vehicles as possible. It’s going to be a long march, boys, but buck up, it’ll all be jolly good fun in the end.”

After that there’s a flurry of action, as men are loaded onto jeeps and tanks and weapons are handed arounded to those still conscious. Bucky gets her hands on a rifle; Steve raises an eyebrow and she raises one right back.

“What?”

“You’re getting on a jeep.”

“I’m walking.”

Steve crosses his arms. “You’re riding a jeep.” He’s got that look in his eyes, that look he gave her when he slipped that diamond ring on her finger and laid her out against the sheets of his bed, naked as a jaybird and all for him. That look like she’s precious and _he can’t look at her like that in front of the men_.

So Bucky does what she’s always done. She juts her chin out and tells him, “make me, Captain.”

Steve throws her over his shoulder and deposits her in the backseat, hopping up after to keep her in. “You’re riding a jeep,” he tells her, “and that’s an order. Get some rest, and maybe I’ll let you walk in the morning.”

“You’re an asshole,” Bucky tells him. “Captain America is an _asshole_. You hear that boys? Stop laughing, Gabe, you’re officially being led by a grade-A jerk and I hope you enjoy your slog through Italian mud. Remember to save some for your momma, it’s _European_.”

Gabe throws a handful of mud in her face. 

“This is your fault,” she tells Steve.

“Sure,” he tells her. “You gonna sleep or what?”

He’s big now, too big, and there’s muscle where he used to be bone, but he’s warm, and he’s _Steve_ and she wipes her face off on his shoulder and the next thing she knows it’s morning.

* * *

“I thought I sent you to Medical.”

Bucky looks up from Steve’s bed, where she’d taken refuge because he has his own room—because he’s a real captain, now, not some mook in the goddamn USO instead of regular army. She oughtta knock him upside the head, but she used up all her energy dodging doctors from Italy all the way back to London. 

“You tried,” she says instead. “Only see, I thought about it, and then I thought, Buck, what’s gonna happen if you go to the docs is, they’re gonna take your shirt off to check for injuries and boy howdy will they be surprised.”

“Can _I_ check?”

“I’m fine.” 

Steve sits next to her anyway, reaches for the hem of her sweater. “Please, Buck.”

She shrugs, pulls her shirt off. The bandage around her breasts is grey with dirt; Steve lets out his breath in a long exhale when he sees it, and his fingers shake as he glides them over her chest.

“They didn’t—Hydra didn’t—”

“Nah,” Bucky tells him, brushing her fingers through his hair even though it doesn’t need it. Someone on the tour must’ve taught him how to keep it off his forehead, or maybe the serum changed this, too. “Far as Hydra knows, my name is James. They never even took my clothes off.”

The marks from the needle are gone, but Steve runs his hands up her arms anyway, slow and careful.

“Steve.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I just. I.”

“We need to lock the door,” Bucky mutters. Steve sighs, but he gets up anyway. Bucky turns her back and starts unrolling bandage, until his hands cover hers, his chest warm against her back. 

“Let me.” Steve nuzzles behind her ear, kisses the side of her neck. “Please.”

He’s careful, slow where Bucky’d go fast. It hurts—aches in ways the march back to base hadn’t, burns in ways she’d thought were burned out of her by Zola—and not all of it is from the bandages. Some of it comes from the gentle caress of Steve’s fingers, the way he rubs his thumb over all her marks and scars. He turns her, with the last of the bandage, ducks his head low and takes her breast in his mouth, and Bucky barely chokes back a sob.

“Sweetheart—”

“—I’m not,” she whispers. “Oh, Steve, I’m not _sweet_.”

He kneels, presses his face to her belly. “You still taste like home.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what, Buck? Don’t love you? Couldn’t help it if I tried.” He pushes her pants down, kisses her hipbone. “You’re it for me, Jamesina Rogers. Till the end of the line, and let me tell you something, that line doesn’t end in London. It didn’t end in Italy, or France, or—you’re my _wife_ , and I will love you to the day I die, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.” Steve tilts his face up, eyes shining. “Just you try it and see.”

He’s so much bigger now, but at this angle, when he’s kneeling, when Bucky bends her knees and curls her back and captures his mouth with hers, it’s almost the same. He hasn’t shaved since the morning, cheeks scratchy against her hands, and then he stands up, arm wrapped around her back, and deposits her on the bed still kissing.

His shoulders are broad, now, but his waist is still skinny and his fingers are still long. Artist’s fingers, that clasp her own and they’re missing a wedding ring—too thick, now—but it dangles down with his dog tags and the diamond he bought her. The sanctity of their marriage, clinking against punched metal with his name and rank and serial number.

She turns her face into his neck, scrapes just a little with her teeth and it still makes him rumble, and it’s the work of seconds to push at his clothes, de-tangle him from army green and those medals for throwing himself into other people’s danger. He pulls a rubber from his wallet, pushes into her and this has grown, too, where he was already big. Or maybe it’s just that it’s been so long, that they aren’t taking time, that she’s not used to it anymore. Used to Steve.

Those big hands cup her breasts, stroking, and that new jaw kisses its way down her shoulder, and he’s everywhere, now. In her and over her, around her, warmth and safety and she needs him closer, closer, where she knows he’s safe.

He rubs at her clit, sends pleasure surging through her and she can’t help sobbing again, it’s been so long. Maybe none of this is real, maybe she’s still on that table, maybe Steve is back in Brooklyn coughing up a lung and Patty can’t find him ‘cause they shipped him to the isolation ward, but even if that’s true, if this is a hallucination, he feels so good. She wraps her legs around his waist and arches into him, pulls him deeper, where she’ll feel it tomorrow, an ache to make her smile among all the others, and comes before she’s ready, hard and fast and shaking from it.

Steve could probably go for hours, if the way he never tired marching through the woods was any indication, but he groans. His face twists up like it always does and he breathes her name like a benediction, seizing up and then stilling, slipping out and leaving her empty.

Later, he’ll buy a tin of petroleum jelly and massage it into the red marks on her chest, and in the morning they’ll be gone. He’ll help her wrap clean bandages around her torso, watch as she pulls on her uniform, styles her hair, and becomes Sergeant Barnes again. He’ll kiss her like that too, to make some point, and Bucky’ll remind him that Sergeant Barnes is his best pal, not his wife, and go find something to do that isn’t seeing doctors until they can meet up for drinks at a pub. Later, she’ll find the men and make sure they’re settled; pick up a new gun and practice ‘till she knows her inside out: the way she kicks, how her pull changes when the barrel’s hot. She’ll get a new uniform, shine her boots, and meet the men for a night out and. Later.

She curls into Steve’s arms, rests her head on this new chest that can handle the weight just fine, and if it takes her longer to fall asleep when his breathing’s regular and his heart beats steady, she gets there just the same.

* * *

 _It’s not like the film reels,_ she writes to Jack, _all full of glamour. There’s a lot of laughing, but brother, it’s because we have to. We have to laugh or the only other choice—isn’t really a choice at all. Besides, it’s funny. It’s all funny, when Cap can lift a tank and bend metal and there’s no one to remember how that skinny little kid from Brooklyn could barely lift a trash can lid to fight off imaginary soldiers._

_Weather’s changing, or maybe it’s just having a walking furnace to share my foxhole. Seems like it isn’t so cold, either way, which is the main thing._

_We liberated Provins last week; I can’t remember how to spell the name right and it probably won’t make it through to you anyhow. Point is, the folks were so grateful, like you’ve never seen. Pressing food on us when it was clear they were half-starved, giving up their beds, singing and dancing. Some of the fellas had a real good time, the girls were that happy. Had to remind them Steve and I are married men. We ended up bunking together, just to save space. Didn’t make sense to put more people out of a bed, when one’d do._

_Keep your head down. I’d take alive over a medal any day._

* * *

Dum-Dum and Gabe find her sitting in the loft of a half-burned barn, one leg out the window as she runs a rag over the barrel of her rifle. Steve and Monty’re on watch below, patrolling the perimeter while Dernier fusses over dinner and the rest of them relax. They settle on the hay on either side of her, backs to the wall; Dum-Dum pulls a bottle of bourbon out from under his bowler.

“How long’ve you been—” Bucky takes a long pull and decides she doesn’t want to know.

Dum-Dum just grins at her. “Saving it for a special occasion.”

“What’s so special about just-like-everywhere-else-we-been?”

Gabe tugs the bottle out of her hands. “Got you to ourselves for a change,” he says between sips.

Dum-Dum twists the brim of his hat between his fingers, rotates it round and round. “You remember our first day of Basic, Buck? Remember Keller’s speech?”

“Sure. America needs its best young men, fit to fight and defend our shores, keep back the rising tide of fascism. Keep our women and children safe, our mothers and fathers and grandparents—‘I know you’re scared, boys. You should be—of me. By the time I’m through with you, by God you’ll be _men_.’ What about it?”

“It seemed to me, not right then, but eventually. Before we ever left for New York, mind you. It seemed to me there were some he wasn’t ever going to make a man out of.”

Bucky manages not to freeze, mostly because she’s forgotten where she put her cigarettes. She pats her pockets, stares at the hay. “There weren’t no blue cards in Charlie Company. Not that I saw.”

“No,” Gabe says. He hands her a cigarette. “Not talking ‘bout blue cards, Buck.”

“Then what the hell’re you talking about?”

“You need to lay off Carter.” Dum-Dum holds out a lighter. The flame dances in the window; Bucky leans forward and sucks it in before a breeze can blow it out. Dum-Dum cups her hands in his, so none of them can see how she’s shaking.

“Steve’s a married man, that’s all.”

Dum-Dum nods. “She knows that, Buck. So does Cap. We all know.”

“Is that what you know?” Bucky asks, voice low.

“I know you’re a damned good sergeant,” Gabe says. “Best sniper in the army, too. I know who told Cap to enlist me. I know—”

“I know what’d happen without you.” Dum-Dum squeezes her hand. “Lay off Carter, Buck. Do an army grunt a favor.”

“Yeah,” Bucky tells him. “Yeah, okay.”

They finish the bottle after that, which is not such a great idea on empty stomachs; Dum-Dum falls off the ladder when they climb down for dinner and it’s only the fact Steve’s there to catch him that keeps him from bashing his head in.

Or at least, that’s what they tell the reporters the next time they’re on leave.

Bucky falls asleep sandwiched between Steve and Monty; in the morning she mends the tear in Dum-Dum’s hat while fixing coffee and beans for breakfast. “You fellas gotta learn how to take care of yourselves better.” 

“But Buck,” Jim says, “that’s what we’ve got you for.”

Bucky punches his shoulder, which shuts him up for as long as anything ever does. That’s mostly the end of it, except the next time they’re in London she buys Carter a scotch, the two of them sitting side by side at the bar, not looking at anything but the taps or their glasses.

“Steve is a good man.”

“He is.” Bucky downs her glass, raises a hand for another. “An idiot who runs into danger at the first sign of trouble, but a good man.”

Carter laughs. “From the way he tells it, he was beaten down in every side alley in Brooklyn.”

“Nah. Beaten up, sure. More times ‘n you could spit at. Beaten down? Never. Steve doesn’t—he doesn’t let anything keep him down.”

“He did when you were captured.”

“Agent Cart—”

“—Peggy.” Carter sips her scotch. Her nails are red and her victory curls are perfect. There’s a print on the glass, a perfect kiss from her lipstick. Bucky wants to hate her, but.

But.

“It can’t be easy,” Carter says, “to love a man like Steve. It must take a village to keep that man from getting himself killed.”

“Peggy,” Bucky says, “you have no idea.”

* * *

 _If you want to see Europe that badly,_ she writes to Patty _we’ll find a way to send you after the war. But I gotta tell you, Pat, it’s mostly mud and rain._

 _We found a house the other day, all alone among the ruins of a village. I mean, there’s clearly been a town there, or something, but nothing was left. A blown out stone church, and all the other houses burnt and bombed, and there in the middle of plaster and wood was one perfect house, completely untouched._

_No one was there, of course—the owner must’ve fled with the rest of the village—which just made it worse. Eerie. Linens on the beds, a long kitchen table like Ma says she had growing up. There were knives and forks and moldy bread—I cut those bits off, and we soaked up our beans with it—and paintings on the wall. Photographs, too, on the mantle. Just a few, of two older folks, with grey hair, a family of five, and a young man, in uniform, his picture draped in black_

_Jacques started crying; just lost it, there in the living room, looking at those pictures. “It is happening all over again,” he said, “but we will stop it. We will stop it, like you did. We will save France.”_

_No one knew what to do, not even Steve. They just looked at me, with these giant, pleading eyes. All these big strong men, frozen at the sight of grief. Useless assholes, I swear to God. Nazis with space weapons, no problem but one crying man and they’re scared stiff. I don’t know if—do you remember when we took you to Coney Island, Steve and I? They had that expression, the whole lot of them. If Peggy had been there, she’d’ve whipped them into shape, but she had the other half of the 107th running exercises a few days’ march away. I must’ve held him for near on fifteen minutes, poor bastard, before it occurred to Jim and Monty to liberate some liquor from the cellar. I’ll say this for France, Pat, they’ve got top quality booze. Two bottles of cognac later, everyone was singing._

_Even Steve._

* * *

“When we go home,” Pinky says, and Bucky throws a boot at him. They’re falling apart anyway; she’s had to take new ones. Steve’s face gets all pinched when they rip more from a dead body than dogtags, but even Steve recognizes a soldier can’t tramp all over the Alps in boots so worn there’s no danger of trench foot, the soles let that much fresh air in. (Not that that’s all Bucky takes, or any of them, when it comes to the Krauts anyway. She’s got a few knives stored in her duffel, and both a Walther PPK and a Luger P08. Also a lighter with a swastika on one side and “Deutschland über alles” engraved on the other. Dum-Dum’s got a collection of Nazi hats; to each his own.) 

“When we go home,” Pinky repeats, throwing the boot at Happy Sam, who tosses it to Jim, “I’m never eating baked beans again.”

“Good lord, man.” Monty, on Bucky’s right, puts down the sock he was darning. “Surely it’s not as bad as all that.”

“Never again, Major.”

“Beans’re about all some people know how to cook,” Bucky comments. 

Steve throws her an affronted look. “I can cook!”

“The captain here can boil cabbage, fellas, and calls it cooking. Oh, and he can boil eggs. And he can boil—”

Peggy starts laughing. Jim throws the boot to her, and she passes it on to Steve, who lobs it at Bucky’s head. Bucky catches it without looking, and throws it behind her.

“Ow!” Dum-Dum grunts and drops down on her left. “Watch where you’re dumping your garbage, Buck.”

“Who says I wasn’t?”

“You two talking again, then?” Dum-Dum asks, taking a cup of beans and jutting his chin at Steve.

Bucky looks across the campfire. His arm’s out of the makeshift sling already, and she can hardly see the blood on his temple, though it’s a toss-up whether that’s ‘cause of the dark or the mud on his face. Either way, she knows it won’t get infected, not anymore. He’s got the shield out, polishing it the way Bucky polishes her rifle. Only right now, instead of treating her gun the way a lady should be treated, she’s rolling a shell casing over and over between her fingers.

“You never pick on anyone else when it’s Cap you’re mad at,” Dum-Dum says.

Bucky shrugs. Steve meets her eyes, something glittering and hopeful in his expression. “I don’t waste time getting mad at idiots, that’s all.”

“Now, Buck, you’ve been mad at me hundreds of times since basic and you know it.”

“Even you aren’t dumb enough to get shot in the head and keep running right into a hail of bullets.”

“It was barely a graze,” Monty says, leaning closer. “And you were pinned down. You can’t blame the man.”

“Can’t I?”

“The sergeant,” Steve tells the campfire, “is real good at stretching a couple of bones into enough meat to last a whole week.”

Dum-Dum puts his cup of beans down. Gabe and Jacques start to inch away, but freeze under Bucky’s glare.

“The captain,” Bucky says, “is a real asshole sometimes. Didn’t I tell you fellas that right away? First thing I said, back in Italy.” Steve’s eyes are definitely glittering now. He stands up, because he _is_ an asshole; because standing now he’s taller than her, even when she shoots to her feet as well. Tall enough to tuck her head under his chin, ‘cept she doesn’t much feel like hugging. Mostly she feels like decking him; him and his lack of flight jump training and his lack of officer training and his lack of common fucking sense, and his bullet holes and muscles and—“they spent all that money giving him a brand new body,” Bucky says, “and they couldn’t cook up the brains to go with it.”

“That’s enough, Buck.”

“No, it ain’t. It ain’t enough until you realize you can’t just throw away an entire plan of attack for—”

“They were _shooting_ at—”

“They’re always fucking shooting, Steve! It’s a goddamned war out here, in case the beans and bullets weren’t enough of a clue! Here, have another one!” Bucky grabs the boot out of Dum-Dum’s hand and hurls it across the fire; Steve catches it, but the force of the throw makes him stumble backwards. She throws her plate after it, her spork, and storms back to their foxhole.

Steve follows her, because of course he can’t let anything go. His voice is low, urgent; like her daddy’s when he’s mad, instead of the Steve she grew up with who shouted his anger to the world. 

“I can’t just let them kill you.”

“The thing is, Steve, you have to.” Bucky’s not quite ready for his arms to slip around her, but she lets him lean into her anyway. “You can’t let five men get killed because of me; it doesn’t work that way.”

“I’m your husband.”

“You’re my captain.”

Steve presses his nose to the back of her neck; he’s trembling, but he whispers, “I’m sorry,” and if there are tears dripping down beneath her collar, well. She won’t write home about it, that’s all.

“I’m sorry too,” she tells him. “I love you.”

They stand like that, together, ‘till the sounds of the campfire start breaking up and it’s time to get some shut eye.

* * *

They stumble across a brothel in Italy, tucked away in the mountains about a half-hour’s drive from the nearest town. Or, half an hour the way Dum-Dum drives.

Bucky’s folks have a car; an old Model A her grandad had saved fifteen years to purchase. She and Steve weren’t allowed to touch it, though, even when they were married; no one touched it but her grandfather, Daddy, and Sean. She learned to drive from Gabe, who insisted no one oughta be taught by Dum-Dum if they wanted to be alive at the end of the journey. 

“Aw, Jones, what’s the point in having all that tank armor if you don’t use it?” Dum-Dum’d grinned, but Bucky had stuck with Gabe.

Steve learned when they were pinnned down in Belgium and had to start the cars without ignition keys or anything. He drives as fast as Dum-Dum, though he likes the motorcycle better. 

It’s Jacques who knocks on the brothel door and speaks with the madam, or whatever the Italians call ‘em. Bucky can just make out the pattern of their conversation, the up-and-down lilt that is wholly unique to Italian and the soft sounds of French shooting back and forth. Finally the woman nods, and lets them in from out of the pouring rain.

Steve and Bucky get a room to themselves, an awkward conversation that ends with Steve blushing and the madam winking. It’s small, the room: a twin bed with brass frame, a lone bureau, and a lamp by the bedside table. Bucky dumps her pack while Steve strips out of his wet things, and runs her fingers over the half-empty bottle of perfume; the lace doily in need of mending. 

There’s a box in the corner, shoved under a chair; she peeks inside despite Steve’s shocked “Bucky!”

“It’s for use, ain’t it?” Bucky grins at him. “We paid for it, didn’t we?”

“But—you—”

She finds a bunch of cotton straps, and when she pulls them out they’re attached to a smooth wooden dick. Steve chokes on whatever he was trying to say.

“You got a tin in your bag?”

“I.” She looks up at him; she doesn’t know what’s on her face, but Steve swallows. “Yeah, Buck.”

They’ve never done it like this, not really. Sometimes Bucky’s pressed a finger up inside Steve while she’s sucking him, because Steve’s books said it felt good and Steve agreed. But they’ve never done more than that.

He’s beautiful, though. Laid out on the bed beneath her, legs drawn up towards his head. His skin is pale beneath the mud, because his tan fades a few hours out of the sun, now, and he still flushes red all round his cock, the rest of him looking whiter in comparison. He’s muscle now, strength, but that pale skin shivers and breaks into gooseflesh at her touch, and he’s soft, for her, except where he’s hard and leaking. He’s soft, and warm, and when she presses her fingers inside he groans into her mouth, all for her.

“You like that, Stevie? Want me to fuck you?”

Steve’s breath hitches; he cups her face in his hands and leans up to kiss her. “Please.”

His stomach shakes beneath her hand when she finally lines up and slides home. The rock of the wooden dick hits against her clit, and she pulls out, pushes back in to feel it again.

“Buck. Bucky, please, Bucky!”

She’s still got the tin open on the bedspread, so she slicks her hand up again, wraps it around Steve’s cock and tugs. He’s so good, so gorgeous, lips all bitten and eyes wide, flushed and pale and strong and sweet and begging. The rocking isn’t enough, so she goes as deep as she can and rubs back and forth against the edge of the dick, hot sparks shooting up inside her. Steve locks his legs behind her waist, nudges her closer with his heels and she can’t help moaning out loud.

“Yeah, Bucky?”

“Steve,” she whispers, leaning forward, breasts brushing his chest. They’re tender, now, always, when she takes the bandages off, and his skin is so warm. He kisses her, again and again and she can’t get any closer but she can’t stop trying. Every circle of her hips makes the both of them curse and she bites Steve’s chest and comes and comes, and he follows her with a shout, spilling all over her hand and her chest and the cotton straps that tie on the dick she’s filled him with.

After, she wets a handkerchief and cleans off the dick, wipes the jelly off Steve and his come off the both of them. Steve wraps a hand around her wrist, kisses her palm, and they fall asleep like that, her hand on his heart.

In the morning, they zipline onto a moving train.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, a HUGE thank you to [Laura Kaye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye) and [Cinaea](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cinaea) for the beta; everything you said made this chapter 10,000% better.
> 
> Also: while I don't believe this rises to the level of a Graphic Depiction of Violence warning, there IS violence in it, and it may be disturbing to some readers.

_BUCKY BARNES: AMERICA’S HERO INE_  
 _NATION REELS AS GRIEVING COMMANDOS REVEAL ALL_  
 _Dum-Dum Dugan: Cap would want the world to know!_  
The Brooklyn Eagle, _April 10, 1945_

There is pain.

There is pain, and there is cold, and the world tilts. Someone is dragging her?

There is pain, and there is cold, and there is a red trail in the snow and a hand on her jacket and someone screams.

Someone screams and there is a face, a face and she doesn’t—she doesn’t understand—Polish? Russian?

The Russians. The Russians are their allies. The Russians. 

No, there’s someone else. Something she needs to do, if she can just remember.

There’s a hand on her jacket and the world tilts as the Russians take her to—

They’ll take her.

They’ll.

There is pain, and there is cold.

She shuts her eyes.

* * *

There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and a mission and pain.

There is a man with a mustache.

There is a man who speaks French and does she listen to French? English is the language of lies and French is the language of love and Russian is the language of obedience and missions and fresh kasha with milk and syrniki with sour cream and knishes, hot and flaky.

There is a man who speaks French and has a moustache and dark hair and there is a man who speaks French and has no mustache and dark skin and there is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and she loves him and hates him and cleans her gun at night, rubs a cloth over it and checks each piece is working, like the doctors check her arm, check her.

She is a weapon, too, and she must be in perfect order for the next mission.

There is always a next mission.

* * * 

There are little girls, little spiders, and she is to evaluate them, train them.

Most of them stare at her with awe, with fear. This is right. Is she not the pinnacle the Red Room has to offer? Department X’s greatest success? They are scared little girls, and she will burn this fear from them, or burn them up entirely.

Two of them are not afraid already.

One has brown hair, in a long neat braid (they all have braids) with soft curls around her forehead. Her eyes are full of anger, hatred, and she glares, glares like she is not to be trained by the best.

The other has red hair and is full of excitement.

These, too, she will burn. There is no room for such things in good soldiers.

“You must be ready not only to learn, not only to kill,” she tells the girls. “You must be ready to die. Who among you will die for Russia?”

She is greeted by silence.

“I’m disappointed,” she says to the matron. “I was told this was a promising group.”

“Wait!”

It is the brunette. She steps forward, bows. “My name is Nadia,” she says, “and I am willing to do whatever is needed.”

“Me too,” says the redhead. “Natalia, I am Natalia, and I will die if I am asked to.”

“I will too!” “And me!” “Please, I will!” cry the others, the frightened ones, falling in line.

“Good,” she says. She points at a blonde. “You are willing to die so that Russia may live?”

“Yes,” says the blonde girl.

She shoots her, between the eyes. It is simple to do so; they are so close. The girl’s body crumples to the ground, and she looks at her web of volunteers. “Next?”

The brunette—Nadia—leaps at her, and Natalia is a beat behind. The others try to swarm her as well. It is a good tactic, this, but it will not work. She’s been fighting off bullies since Steve was big enough to get them in trouble, which was always, and her arm moves faster than the girls can process, hits harder than their bones can take. They go flying like confetti, dotting the courtyard, and Natalia has climbed up her back but it’s the work of a moment to bend forward on one knee and topple her over, slam her to the ground. She stills, and then there is only Nadia, who has a knife in each hand and anger to cloud her vision.

“Come then,” she says, and Nadia grits her teeth, throws one knife, and attacks in earnest.

She deflects the knife with her am, and the child too. Nadia holds on, through, swings up and wedges the remaining blade between the plates of her arm, and pries.

It is a good trick, and even exposes some wires, but she has more than one arm.

She squeezes Nadia’s throat between her fingers, and the child turns red, and then purple, and then she sleeps, to wake in the morning and try again.

Only the strongest must survive.

She points to Nadia, Natalia, one or two others. They are carried out; she kills the rest.

The doctor shakes his head and tells her she must be more careful with Russia’s greatest weapon.

“ _I_ am Russia’s greatest weapon,” she says, as he fiddles with her elbow joint.

“Yes,” he says, “exactly.”

She spends a month with the girls in the Red Room, teaching them not even close to everything she knows, but a lot—enough, perhaps, to cover for when she’s sleeping and Steve can’t watch her back.

“You can’t do everything,” Gabe says.

She tells him, “watch me,” and the doctor frowns at her, and hands her the bite plate. Or cuts out her tongue. Is this when he cuts out her tongue? Is this the doctor? Is—she can’t think, can’t concentrate. Someone is screaming, if only she could remember who.

* * * 

There is snow, so much snow, and goggles so she can see in the harsh bright landscape and someone paints across her cheeks to lessen the glare and there is a man with big hands who licks his thumb and rubs her face to make sure she isn’t wearing powder.

“You’re better than that,” he tells her, and she lifts a hand but it’s knocked aside.

She isn’t to interfere with mission preparations.

Interference is. She has never interfered, it isn’t allowed, she knows, knows in her bones that interference is. 

She mustn’t think about it. She is better than that. The man told her so, and he said it in English but she thinks he was sincere. He sounded sincere.

She doesn’t know where the man went, or who he was, which means he must not have been important, correct? She remembers her missions, because they are always in Russian and that is how she knows to pay attention. 

There is snow and cold and a gun in her hand and then the snow is red, red, and her arm hurts even though it wasn’t made to feel pain.

* * *

They take her back to the Russian front, after. It is easier, perhaps. She was quiet, and good, and they fed her and gave her a blanket and didn’t make her think about the trail of bright red on the snow or the way there was rope tied too tightly around her left—her left—the one who speaks English, Nikolai, he holds her waist and wraps her right arm over his shoulders, and they don’t stumble because Bucky doesn’t want to be left behind.

They finished their mission. That is good, she recognizes that somewhere in the back of her mind. Everything is cold again, now her skin’s stopped burning. Nikolai said that was frostbite, but frostbite doesn’t get better. Monty and Pinky swore up and down there were men in their old regiment who lost noses and ears and fingers during the Bulge. “One poor lad lost a hand,” Monty says.

Bucky ignores him, puts one foot in front of the other. He needs to be quiet; they can’t let the Nazis know they’re here.

“There was a chap lost an arm,” Pinky says.

Bucky doesn’t have frostbite. Her skin wasn’t cold, it was hot, everywhere, or was that the snow melting? It doesn’t melt under her boots. Her boots that are new-old-stolen, and don’t let the air in. Good solid boots.

She’s going to throw them at Steve’s fat head, when the Russians send her back to the Allied camps.

There’s a truck, on the horizon. A black blur among the snow and the trees, at first, but Bucky blinks and it’s a truck. Their truck? 

Nikolai and the others help her in the back, then climb up after. One of them speaks to the driver, a quiet mess of Russian, and the truck starts moving. Pinky and Monty haven’t made it in.

Bucky watches them fade in the distance. It’s alright; she’ll catch up with them again in London, whenever she gets there.

It’s a long drive, bouncy, and Nikolai’s let go of her. She wants to lean back against Dum-Dum, or Gabe. She wants Steve.

She sits upright, swaying just a little, the entire drive. When they reach the Russian camp, Nikolai hops out first, and calls for a—she doesn’t know, it’s in Russian, but she assumes a doctor. He takes her back to a tent, to rows of cots and wounded, and leaves her there with a cup of something hot.

“Drink, little dog.”

“You’ll tell the 107th—”

“I will tell the appropriate authorities. That is how you say it, yes? Trust me,” Nikolai says, “I will see you are taken care of.”

Even so, she hesitates. Something is off, she just can’t put her finger on it, and—

“Drink, little dog,” Nikolai tells her, and Bucky is tired and cold and her arm hurts, aches and burns where the rope digs in and Monty didn’t make the zipline and Pinky wasn’t even on the mission and Nikolai is watching, watching, waiting.

Bucky drinks.

* * *

There is a man with no mustache and dark skin and one eye and she shoots him through the wall and there is a man with blond hair and blue eyes who follows her across the rooftops and a singing in the air.

She returns his shield like a boomerang, hard and fast, knocks him back a few steps. Not many, but enough. Enough to jump and disappear and return to base.

The target is dead; the mission.

There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and he demands a mission report.

“Did you meet anyone else?”

She tells him everything.

She is a good little do—no, that was before? A soldi—no. She is an asset, yes. Because she speaks English, but her hair is chin-length. When her hair is long she is a civilian and when her hair is short and she speaks English she is a soldier and when her hair is any length and she speaks Russian she is a soldier and a little dog and General Lukin tells her she is good and when her hair reaches to her chin and she speaks English she is an asset and she helps to mold the world and make it better.

She is an asset and she tells him everything and then she is given a burger and french fries, because she is in America now, and she is sent to sleep in the barracks “just in case.”

* * *

There is a soldier who calls her little dog and asks if Russia is not better than America.

“I have never been to America,” she tells him, and he laughs and passes her the vodka. 

There is a soldier who calls her Sarge and it is annoying, she isn’t a sergeant, not really, not like the others. Not like the men.

He calls her Sarge and he passes her a cigar from behind his ear and what the hell, right? The smell will be long gone by the time she is home again. 

She drinks and she smokes and General Lukin, he tells her not to speak in English, because English is the language of liars, and she obeys him in this as in everything. What does it matter? She can speak Russian and German and French and Mandarin and Arabic and Farsi and Yiddish and Spanish and Swahili. She has never even been to America; what does it matter?

There is a soldier, and there is a gun, and there is a bell tower, and she is a good little dog. 

* * *

There is a church with a round bulb on top in bright colors and a target inside, with a beard and a black robe and the smell of incense.

There is a church with a pyramid top and a clean-shaven priest and a frail boy with yellow hair at the altar and a pew she sits on and stands and kneels and.

There is a target, because there is a gun in her hands.

Churches are sacred, she thinks, churches should not have blood, should not have death. Churches are holy to—there is a word, a safety word, but she can’t remember it. There is a target, and a gun in her hands, and a clear line of sight through window and.

She hesitates.

She hesitates and there is pain and no breakfast and that is how she knows because she can’t remember but there’s something important that she has to do.

There is a church and a target and a mission and she never fails.

* * *

General Lukin tells her she is to speak English now.

She never speaks English with General Lukin.

“English is the language of lies.”

“Yes,” he tells her, tucking her hair behind her ear with a frail, withered hand. “This is true, Soldier. English is the language of lies and liars, and that is where you are going now. You have been a good soldier to the Motherland, yes? You have a new mission now. You are not to be a soldier any longer. You are an asset now, and you will have a handler instead of a general, and you will do as he tells you. You will obey, yes? You will not fail?”

“I never fail,” she tells him. He kisses her forehead and there is a man with blond hair and blue eyes, so blue, and he kisses her forehead and calls her darling and sweetheart and tells her to be still so he can paint her, for once, and she is. She is still, because she always obeys.

There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and he speaks to her in English so she ignores him, and there is a sharp pain in her face and that is how she knows he is real.

“You are an asset for Hydra now,” he tells her. “Pay attention.”

“The fist of Hydra,” she says.

“If you like.” He sits in front of her. “You are going to help us mold the century. Bring order. Bring peace. Hydra wants to make the world better, safer. So people don’t have to fight anymore, die anymore. But we need your help to do it.”

He slides a paper across the table. It stops in front of her, and she takes her eyes off his face to look at it.

“A level nine target. I want confirmed kill in 48 hours.”

“Yes sir,” she says, and there is a pain in her face.

“Speak English,” he tells her.

“I will try,” she says.

“You will _try_? Lukin said you never fail.”

“I never fail a mission, it is true. But sometimes I forget things. Nothing important. I remember missions, I always remember missions. Other things. Faces, and.”

“And English?”

His face is gentle, though his voice is harsh. She glances at him from the side of her eyes. “The doctors, they can help?”

“Confirmed kill in 48 hours,” he tells her. “I will see what the doctors can do.”

* * *

She’s burning, burning, from inside out, from her bones, she can feel it, the fire, engulfing her. She’s so cold and so hot and her skin is on fire, her skin. Will it melt away, leaving nothing but heat and hell and blood red bones?

She’s seen that, hasn’t she?

She has seen.

There was a man, a rat-faced man with glasses and—

_“You will be the fist of Hydra.”_

Is that right? No, that was before. Before? On a table, she thinks, not, not a floor, no rugs, that was—he spoke German? He spoke English, or she wouldn’t understand, but his accent, his accent was different. She was reaching for him? Is that it?

She can’t think, she can’t. He was important, but she can’t remember why.

Why is it so hot? She can’t stop shivering, can’t, can’t, and there are voices but she doesn’t understand.

Someone holds a cup to her lips, water—no, vodka.

“To warm you up, Comrade,” but she’s warm already, isn’t she? “Now, now, you must drink it all. You are a capitalist dog, hm? Drink with the greed of America, drink it down, that’s right. Nice and warm, to fight the frostbite. Though I wonder, Comrade. You should not be alive—still, we must do what we can for our little dog.”

Someone wraps a blanket around her. She reaches for it with both hands, but only one grabs on. Only one? She looks down.

Someone is screaming.

There is a sharp flash of pain, on her face. 

“You will be quiet, little dog. We cannot be found for another week. The Nazis, you know.”

She knows. Does she? What does she knows?

“Steve.”

“I do not know this word. But I think I know your face. Even in Russia we hear news of the great Captain America, and his band of little soldiers. You are Sergeant Barnes, yes? We know just what to do with you, Sergeant Running Dog. Now hush; we have a mission.”

Missions. She had a mission. A mission, and Steve, and pain. Pain and fever-cold, and a rat-faced man, a doctor, and pain.

 _”The procedure has already started.”_

She hushes, and waits for the pain to go away.

* * *

There are two targets, and they should be easy because targets are always easy. Missions can be difficult, sometimes, if there are civilians or she requires extraction, but targets are always easy.

There is another man with them, and they are none of them easy.

The woman has red hair and a phone that speaks and there is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and a shield and.

“Bucky?”

There is a man who is still almost a boy and a park and a ring and there is a boy who is almost a man and a sweaty hand hanging off the side of her dress and there is a boy who lets her help him to his feet and there is a baby in her arms and two boys at her side and a woman who tells her, “gently, gently,” and a man with big warm hands and there is a man with a mustache and a cigar and none of them are Bucky.

There is a man with dark skin and cigarettes and a girl on each arm and there is a man with a mustache and rolled-up sleeves and suspenders and a crashing car and there is a man who speaks French and a man with a beret and a man from Fresno and none of them are Bucky.

There is a soldier who calls her little dog and a General and there is—there is—there is a man with blond hair and blue eyes who needs her help and—

“Who _the hell_ is Bucky?”

* * *

She wakes on a table. 

There’s an overhead light, bright and strong in her eyes, and straps holding her down, across her chest. There’s a man in a coat, a man with glasses—rat-faced? _”Congratulations, Sergeant Barnes.”_ No. No, that isn’t right, a different man, a man red, red in the face and against the metal of her hand. Her.

There’s another man, on her right, shouting, and there are guns and her shoulder hurts, her arm, her.

She lets the red-faced man go, but it is too late.

There’s a stab in her arm—her right arm—and the room goes black again, the guns fading out.

She wakes on a table.

“I know who you are,” a Russian general tells her. “And I know who you will be.”

 _”The fist of Hydra.”_ Why does she think—

“I am General Lukin,” he tells her. “And you, Mrs. Rogers, shall be one of my widows. In a way, you already are.”

He shows her a newspaper, and she doesn’t need to read Russian to understand the headline: Steven Rogers, 1918-1945.

He smiles at her, and a machine lowers over her head, and someone is screaming.

She wakes on a table.

Her tongue is swollen in her mouth, bitten.

There is a man, a doctor, and another man, with a gun, and the doctor undoes the straps around her chest, her arms. The man with the gun says something she doesn’t understand, she can’t understand, and he gestures with his gun, and she follows him out the door.

There are more men with guns, and men with clipboards, and when she doesn’t understand them there are fists and boots and shouting and sometimes, sometimes there is the machine on her head and screaming, screaming and they give her a bite plate but there is always the screaming, even then, the screaming and then.

She wakes on a table.

* * *

There is a car and a scientist and a mission and.

There is a plane and a ballplayer and a mission and.

There is a space shuttle and astronauts and a mission and.

There is gun and a singer and a mission and.

There is a gun and a politician and a mission and.

There is a gun and a mission and.

There is a mission.

* * *

There is training every day to make her a good soldier, a better soldier. A servant of Russia.

They call her their little dog because she obeys so well, they tell her. She is the pet of the army. They give her breakfast and call her their little dog. They give her a gun and call her their little dog. There is pain—never. There is never pain. There is only the room and the training and.

They call her their little dog because she obeys so well, learns new tricks, but she is more than that, Aleksander Ivanovitch Lukin tells her, before her mission. She is a hunting dog, a fighting dog, a war dog. She is a soldier of the Motherland, and she will protect it with all that she has to give.

She does not tell him she has given everything already; the General always finds more to take.

There is training, on guns and on languages and on fighting and on spying. If she does well, she is fed meat and borscht and thick black bread and vodka flowing like water, and after there is the small room with the window that freezes on her reflection and then there are wet clothes and cold-hot skin and the doctors fussing, always, and breakfast before the training starts again.

If she does not do well, there is a bite plate in her mouth for her safety—or is that later? earlier? later—and straps on her arms for the safety of others and a bright white surge and screaming, and then there is the small room and a face in the frosted window and the doctors, fussing, and no breakfast, and that is how she knows she has failed.

She is a good dog. She does not fail.

She is sent on a mission; then Lukin meets her in a new room, a new place, and she gives him the hand of the man whose throat she slit, as proof of her success.

That night she eats with the other soldiers, and she sleeps in the barracks, and in the morning she has coffee and tells Dum-Dum to quit hogging all the beans.

“You speak English?” Sergei Nikolaiovitch asks her.

“Of course not,” she tells him. “Where would I have learned English?”

Lukin tells her to kill a high-ranking Party member—a traitor—and his wife. “The boy as well,” he says, “but bring the girl alive. Show her first the bodies of her family.”

She shoots the man through the window, an easy kill. He has no blinds drawn, is backlit, and the wind is non-existent. Not that it would matter.

He falls, and she collects her shell-casing and makes her way across the street, over the rooftops, and down to the wife’s bedroom.

She has long brown hair, half-braided, getting ready to go out. There are soft curls by her forehead.

She is screaming.

There is always screaming, until there is a doctor or a frosted room or a knife to the neck and a hot spurt of blood to soak into the carpet.

The children are huddled in a closet, in the dark. She can hear them breathing from the door to the nursery, loud, desperate gasps, and the stench of urine is overwhelming. Someone should clean them up and put them to bed. She opens the door to the closet.

The little girl is sobbing, clinging to her brother.

“Please,” he says, “please don’t hurt her.” He raises his chin. “Take me.”

“You would not make a very good spider.”

He kicks out at her, struggles in the grasp of her iron fist. “Pick on someone your own size!”

“There’s no one your size to pick on, Steve,” she tells him. “Be a good little soldier, and I will make it quick.”

The girl screams—she must learn to be quiet.

“Hush now, both of you.” She catches the girl around the waist. “It is good that you love each other,” she says, “but it is better to love Mother Russia.”

“I want _my_ mother,” the girl sobs. “Please, please, I want my mother!”

She nods. “You shall have her.”

The girl goes silent when she sees the woman. That is good. General Lukin will know she is quiet, like all little spiders.

“Are you going to kill us too?” asks the boy.

“Yes,” she says, “and no.” She breaks his neck, because he was good, and she cradles the girl in her arms until her struggles cease and she’s unconscious.

Lukin tells her she did well, very well, and gives her schnapps to share with the men, and she dreams that night of a little boy with thumbs inside his fists and in the morning there are blini and training and then there is screaming and a frosted window and doctors, always fussing.

“I have made you angry?” she asks Lukin. “Did I fail?”

“No,” he says. “No, little dog, little soldier. You are always steadfast, are you not?”

She smiles at him, and again when she’s given a new gun to learn. It is true.

She never fails.

* * *

It hurts. The machine.

It hurts and hurts but they give her a bite plate and they strap her down and it is for her own good. She gets erratic, she knows this. He tells her, and she remembers. This, she remembers.

She is erratic, and he smiles at her and holds her hand and then sometimes there is pain and sometimes there is a mission and a gun and sometimes there is a room and a frozen window and always she is making the world a better place.

There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes who tells her she is good, and sweet, and kind, and she knows this is a lie because she isn’t sweet, but he says it anyway.

There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and he loves her, and he draws her, and he keeps her ring around his neck.

There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and he loves her, he must, to stay, to help, to make her useful, is that not love?

* * *

There is pain because this is a mission debrief and she needs to pay attention but there is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and he is not the man in front of her, she doesn’t think, and she knew him? She knew.

There is a train and he is reaching for her and there is a rat-faced man and he is reaching for her and she knew him. She knew him.

There is a bite plate and there is pain, pain, and someone is screaming and she thinks—she thinks—she—

There is a mission. There is a mission and the mission target flies away from her with a subtarget and she kills everyone in her way because collateral damage is unimportant to the mission and she follows, she follows. She kicks him, and she rips a wing off the other, but the main target hangs on.

She meets him inside.

She shoots him and shoots him and she keeps shooting at his gut, instead of the head, and he is fast, very fast, but it is not just that, _he shouldn’t be here_ and she is _so angry_ and he dislocates her shoulder and everything fades to darkness and when it is light again he is climbing the central tower and she shoots him and hits, hits, hits, and he still. He replaces his chip, and then there’s a lurch and a beam falls and she is trapped.

She never fails.

She never fails, and she is trapped and he dislocated her shoulder and she can’t get the leverage, she—he lifts the beam off of her and she is on him, on him, and he _won’t fight, how_ dare _he?_.

She hits him and hits him and hits him and—

“I’m with you to the end of the line,” Steve says, “you know that, right Buck? You and me.”

“I know,” she says, “me too,” and he kisses her hand, her hand that has his ring on it, a little band of gold and a little diamond and then he goes home because he’s not allowed to see her again until the wedding.

She’s getting married tomorrow.

She’s getting married to _Steve_.

“Till the end of the line,” she whispers, hugging herself, and Sean throws a pillow at her head and she catches it and—

She wants to get a ride home from her folks, because Steve should be around people, but maybe he’ll talk to her if it’s just the two of them. Talk like he hasn’t since Mom got sick, real sick, not just an intermittent cough. She slips her arm through his, because he can’t shake her off, not Bucky, he’s stuck with her till the end of the line and—

Her hair is short, and she got good money for it, but she looks—she looks—“like my best girl,” Steve says, and pulls her down next to him on the couch, presses his forehead to hers. “Ain’t nothing you can do to get rid of me, stupid. Don’t you know that yet? Your stuck with me till the end of the line,” and she sobs into his shoulder and—

There’s a man with blond hair and blue eyes and he’s Steve, he’s _Steve_ , and she’s nearly killed him, _oh God_ , he’s, he’s, he’s—

He’s falling, and she lets go, she lets go and she’s falling and the air is whistling around her and there’s snow–NO. No, there is water and debris and Steve is going to drown.

She grabs him, and she swims to shore, and the water falls down his cheek as he takes a gurgled breath and.

She nearly killed him.

She nearly killed _Steve_.

Her arms hurt and her heart hurts and she needs to—needs—he’s going to wake up. He isn’t little, he’s big right now, and that means he’s going to heal and he’s going to wake up and she nearly killed him. 

She holds her right arm close, where it hurts less, and she walks away.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a huge thank you to my betas, [Laura Kaye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye) and [Cinaea](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cinaea); you're both amazing.
> 
> So, so sorry this chapter took so long, you guys. I can't even begin with how awful work has been... but I've gotten it up in the end! Thank you for your patience. I promise, as always -- I *will* finish this fic! I love it too much not to.

_Dear Jack,_  
_I’ve left this in the care of Peggy Carter, a friend. If I don’t make it home, she’ll see you get this, and without the censors getting their hands on it, too._  
_I wish I could say I hope you never read it._  
_I want to give you that, Jack, hand to God I do, but—you remember when I first told you I’d signed up? Daddy said war was no place for a woman. He was right._  
_It’s no place for a_ person _._  
_Some day it’ll end, I suppose, and God-willing we’ll all come back, you and Steve and me, and then the hard work’ll begin. Then we’ll have to put down the Bibles and the rifles and the_ stupid, bulls-eye-painted shield _and pick up our lives again. And the truth is, I don’t know how to do that. I feel like I’ve been a soldier for so long now, Jackie. I’ve been at_ war _, and it’s all I’m good at, and I’m so tired of it._  
_I’m so tired._  
_How do you forget this? How do you forget the way the air turns electric right before a storm and part of you is angry at the thought of being cold and wet and muddy again and part of you is grateful because the ground is so red, Lord, when you close your eyes all you see is red? You hear footsteps and freeze because it’s likely someone coming to slit your throat or shoot you. You see new faces and hope they don’t become familiar because it’ll just hurt more when they die. How do you lock that away and go back to being a wife?_  
_~~What kind of mother could I ever~~_  
_I hope you never see this, I do, for your sake, but. The truth is, I’d just as soon be lost out here._  
_The truth is, I already am._  
_Take care of Mama and Daddy for me. They took Sean hard, don’t you let them fret about me. Pat’ll be okay, he’s young, but you look out for Mama and Daddy. And when Steve comes home, you just remind him as much as I became a Rogers, he became a Barnes. He’s gonna blame himself—you know how he gets—but he’s been your brother just about your whole life, so don’t you let him wallow._  
_And if he marries Carol Finnigan I’ll haunt you both from beyond my empty grave, Jack Barnes, you mark my words._  
_I love you. Keep your head down, and get home safe._  
_Buck_  
_Excerpt from_ An Epistolary War: the Private Correspondence of Sgt. Bucky Barnes, _received by First Sergeant Jack Barnes April 14, 1945, Hamilton, Nigel, Random House, 1985_

It’s true. All of it, everything Steve’s words implied, it’s all—that’s her face. That’s her face, and he’s the blond with blue eyes—one of the—it’s all true.

She doesn’t remember leaving the Smithsonian, but she remembers everything else.

She remembers seeing the ad for the Captain America Exhibit on the side of a bus, remembers spending a week holed up in a motel puking her guts out and shaking her way through the last of whatever drugs Hydra had her on, remembers stealing cash from pedestrians, clothes off a clothes-line, remembers—she remembers.

Her face is splashed all over Steve’s exhibit. Her face, smiling up at him. Her face, laughing as she shoves him on camera, over and over and over again in a 30-second reel. Her face from the pages of his sketchbook (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, her _mama_ saw those pictures, _on permanent loan from the private collection of Eleanor and James Barnes, Sr._ , her _daddy_ saw what Steve had sworn up and down no one but the two of them would ever see). She’s there, on display, naked and laid bare and why the hell not? Every other inch of her’s belonged to anyone but her for 70 years, why not this too? 

Everywhere she turns, there’s Steve and there’s her and there’s Steve _and_ her and she can’t. She can’t.

 _Sgt. Bucky Barnes was the only member of the Howling Commandos to give her life in service of her country_ , the exhibit says.

Better she should stay dead.

Better she should’ve died in the first place.

Steve’s in the hospital, according to the news; he needed reconstructive surgery, and she’s the one in pieces, in shreds, but he’s the one came closest to dying.

She can’t go to Steve, and she can’t stay here, with her face and her memories—there’s a man with blond hair and blue eyes and _she can’t stay here_.

So she goes to Brooklyn. It isn’t home, exactly, but at least it isn’t anything worse.

* * *

It’s the beginning of June, and the city’s already heating up. 80 degrees out, warm enough to make a long-sleeved shirt uncomfortable. Her left arm has a temperature regulator which keeps it from burning her (or freezing in the winter), but it’s still too recognizable to go uncovered. She keeps her hair down, under a baseball cap, so her face is hidden; that with the smell of living on the street means most people’s eyes skitter right past her. The few who notice aren’t the type to be believed if they tell people the D.C. Terrorist is camped out near Sullivan Place.

Ebbets Field was razed, but what the hell, right? So was Bucky.

There’s good money to be made, if you don’t have much pride. There were times it seemed like pride was just about all Steve and Bucky had, besides each other, but she sure doesn’t have Steve now, and without him there ain’t much point in hanging onto anything else.

She gets a stained piece of cardboard, lifts a marker from the trash and proclaims herself a “Veteran In Need of a Hand.”

It makes her snort every time she thinks about it, so that’s something.

June gives way to July, to a week of 95-degree days and a heat so heavy she can practically see it. The air wavers before her, steams off the blacktop, and if she didn’t have the serum she’d have heat stroke, likely, but all she’s got is clothing she hasn’t washed in a week and her cardboard sign.

Sudsy, one of the regulars she runs into using the showers at the good shelter (the one with individual stalls, that takes in families and battered women, the one Bucky avoids at night because other folks need those beds a hell of a lot more than she does) tells her about a kitchen over by St. Frank’s, where Father P keeps the air conditioning cranked and all the volunteers are on the street.

“He turned a blind eye to folks sleeping in the pews, too, back when he was in charge,” Sudsy says, “but he’s been retired, oh, a long time now. He must be getting on 85 or more.”

“What’s the P stand for?”

Sudsy shrugs. “Priest or something, I guess.”

Sudsy’s in her mid-60s, but she looks older after twenty years on the streets. She’s got tight curly hair only just streaked with grey, hands gnarled from scrubbing floors and dishes, and rich mahogany skin. She seems to think Bucky’s a chick in need of mother henning, which’d be laughable if it weren’t frustrating. 

Not frustrating enough to keep her from the showers, just. She has no patience for nosy. Nosy means either thinking you know better than Bucky how she should live her life, or you’re Hydra in a post-SHIELD world.

Father P could be anyone. They say Pierce is dead, but the DNA tests ain’t come back yet, and the body was too charred for identification the old-fashioned way.

Anyway, even someone who calls St Francis of Assisi _Frank_ can’t really believe the P stands for Priest.

Bucky waits three days before she checks the church out. There’s certainly a retired priest there who lets folks stay in the kitchen and feeds ‘em for free. He was tall once, but he stoops now, leans on a cane. It doesn’t seem like an act, but then, even Hydra agents get old.

A church is tempting, surprisingly so. She doesn’t care about the kitchen so much, even with the air outside weighing her down, reminding her of nights they’d sleep on the fire escape, her and Steve, and even the thin sheet they used for modesty was too much, too much. She used to set a block of ice in front of a fan, to blow cool air in his face and keep him from taking ill, though the truth was the summer was better for his lungs, if not so great for the rest of him. Not so much wheezing, then, when he let her press her ears up to his chest and listen, patiently running his fingers through her hair until she was so hot, so sticky, that even for Steve she couldn’t touch another person. 

Sometimes he’d take the ice, when it had melted small, and run it down her shirt, between her breasts, or up into the back of her hairline. Those nights she’d sleep naked, and her sweat wasn’t just from the heat of summer.

But a church, a place of sanctuary and rest and withdrawal from the world—that pulls at her. A place to put everything right into the hands of God, even herself.

She goes on a day when Father P is out, making rounds elsewhere in the parish. It’s pleasantly cool, even with the press of bodies laughing and jostling each other in the kitchen, and Bucky keeps her head down and chops the vegetables she’s handed without complaint, peels potatoes and washes mug after mug after chipped plate. Everyone gets handed gloves at the kitchen door, which makes it easy; her left hand invisible and her right soft as a baby with no sign she spends hours under a scalding hot tap, scrubbing away.

“You’ve got a good hand in the kitchen,” Sudsy says.

Bucky shrugs.

“Suit yourself, hon.” Sudsy’s punching dough down, because “a body’s gotta have homemade bread on occasion or there ain’t no point.”

There was good bread in Russia. Dark, heavy bread to soak up the borscht and the vodka. They used to joke—there was no bread with Hydra. In many ways, Hydra was easier. The Russians were harsh with their training, but Hydra got her skilled, and outside of the chair there wasn’t much discipline. Pierce, on occasion, but a slap hardly counted. And before Russia, the army . . . well. Enough ketchup could make almost anything taste good, and with the spam you’d hardly notice anyways. 

Before that, there were breadlines.

She leaves while the bread is baking.

There’s a tree near the Lefferts Historical House that she likes to lean against while the park’s open. The cops chase everyone out around one, and Bucky makes sure to go quiet, easy, head down and no trouble here, sir. But until then, from five in the morning every day she sits by the tree with her sign and her cup and occasionally someone’ll give her a bagel or a sandwich, and she’ll share half of it with a squirrel that lives in a hole halfway up the trunk. It’s small and chitters angrily and reminds her of Steve.

She must be there too regular, though, if folks know enough to say that’s where to find her.

She hears the three-legged hobble of a man with a cane before she sees him. Most old people shuffle, half-afraid to lift a foot off the ground in case the other one goes with it. He’s not quite there yet, but he’s on his way. 

If he _is_ Hydra, she’s gonna have to leave the city after taking him down in front of half of Prospect Park.

“I heard you might want to talk, young lady,” he calls from down the path. She ought to get up and meet him, lead him by the arm to a bench—Ma would be scolding her up and down, letting a retired priest exhaust himself coming to her—but she’s too tense. She doesn’t have a weapon on her, other than the weapon she is herself.

She doesn’t want to fight.

Father P waits for her to speak, still tottering towards her, until it becomes clear she doesn’t plan on responding. “You might have to speak up a bit, to account for my hearing, but I’m a fair hand at listening.” He chuckles at his own bad joke.

What kind of priest _jokes_ with potential parishioners?

That’s the first surprise, that he would try to make her laugh. The second is when she raises her head, to see what he looks like, and his cane clatters to the ground. He reaches for her with trembling fingers, only to snatch them away and make the sign of the cross.

He really is a priest then. “Father?”

“Lord in heaven,” he whispers, blue eyes filling with tears, “you look just the same. Just exactly the same. Steve said,” he adds, and Bucky knows at last what the P stands for, “but I didn’t believe him, God forgive me.”

“Hello, Patty.” Bucky stands, taking his hands in hers and pulling him, gently, into a hug.

“Bucky, Bucky.” He leans into her, cheek leathery and worn against her own. “Thank you,” he says, and it sounds like a prayer. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

* * *

Pat takes her back to his room. He’s probably not supposed to, but it’s clear he won’t let her out of his sight. He tries to take her sweatshirt, clearly wants to take all of her clothes. Bucky understands the impulse—she hasn’t done laundry in a week and a half—but she hesitates nonetheless.

“It’s alright.” Pat tugs at her sleeve, matter-of-fact and terribly gentle at the same time. “Steve told me. We should call him,” he adds.

Bucky bristles. “I don’t want to see him.”

“Who said you should see him?” He hangs her sweatshirt up in his closet, next to all his nice, clean clothes. “I said call.”

“I don’t want to talk to him either.”

“So I’ll do the talking. You be a silent ghost between us; it’ll be just like every other conversation Steve and I’ve had the last three years.”

“Patrick.”

Pat draws himself up as tall as he can. Taller than before, now he’s inside and doesn’t need the cane. “He’s your husband.”

“And you’re my baby brother, not my priest.”

“Don’t think you’re getting out of _that_ conversation, either,” he says, shuffling past her into the kitchen and putting a kettle on. “ _Pat’ll be okay, he’s young_. Of all the ridiculous things to write—”

“Well ain’t you? Okay, I mean.”

Pat scowls. “That is not the point, Jamesina.”

“You are though, aren’t you?”

He softens, all at once. “I am now.” He takes down two mugs from the cupboard, hands Bucky the one that says _M*A*S*H_ and keeps for himself _#1 Father_.

Bucky watches him putter around, fetching cookies and a box of tea. The water boils, and he pours for her first, hands that were shaking in the park steady now. Steadier.

His eyes are a little cloudier, but their shape is the same, the gleam in them every bit as impish for all his years as a man of God. He still has that dimple in his chin, still has a slight tilt to his lips on the right side. She blinks and he’s sixteen, sitting at the board Steve puts over their tub to serve as a table, a pile of schoolbooks in front of him and Red Barber announcing the Dodgers game; blinks again and he’s 86, lifting the tea bag from her mug and dropping it in his own.

Bucky looks away, down to the table and her cup. “Do they still have MASH units?” she asks, groping for something—anything—to talk about that isn’t laid out like a minefield between them, 70 years in the making and just waiting to explode.

Pat snorts, sounding just like Daddy used to and not at all like Bucky expects from a man of God. Father O’Malley _may_ have snorted, on occasion, she supposes, but he certainly never did so in front of her.

“War didn’t end with you and Jack,” Pat says. He sips his tea, eyes boring into her. “Ma thought she was so lucky, sending me to college at 16. Thought I’d be safe.”

“No one’s ever safe.”

“I certainly wasn’t. Finished seminary just in time to catch the tail end of Korea. Twenty years later, they made a tv show.”

“Pat.” 

Pat pries her right hand off her mug, takes it in both of his. “You were always so much older; I aged you in my mind. Always ten years ahead of me, you understand?” He kisses her, the back of her hand. Squeezes. “I forgot how young you really are.”

Bucky tries to laugh, but it catches in her throat, and when she speaks her voice is low, heavy. “I’m not.”

He squeezes her hand again, then goes back to his tea.

* * *

They fall into a routine, after that.

Bucky won’t stay at his apartment, at least not until he’s nagged her every which way to Sunday. She forgot (among all the many things that Lukin and Hydra made her forget) how much of a pain in her _ass_ Pat could be.

Seventy years don’t seem to have changed that.

He nags at her and complains to the ether about being an old man with aches in his joints and not long left in this world, dear Lord, if only there were someone young and spry and who knew how to make corned beef and cabbage like his mother used to, who could come take care of him and maybe tuck a blanket around his lap and keep the window from being too drafty and sleep on his couch so he felt safe with all the break-ins in the neighborhood. 

He nags, and Bucky rolls her eyes and grumbles, but she also makes him dinner, and if some of it ends up in her own stomach, well, so be it, and if his couch makes her neck hate her in the morning at least it’s better than an alley and a cardboard sign. She disappears on Sundays, because that’s when he sees the family—not Jack, Jack passed a few years ago, but his children and grandkids—and Steve calls, every week like clockwork. He’s gonna ask Pat about her one day, and Pat won’t lie to him. She knows that, wouldn’t ask him to.

She’ll have to move on, then.

But she comes round the rest of the time, because if she doesn’t Pat goes to her tree in Prospect Park and the squirrels there could probably mug him for his lunch money. It would be embarrassing.

Pat leaves a lot of photo albums “just lying around,” because he’s still a little shit.

Bucky likes the new ones, the pics of Jack’s kids and grandkids. “Little Jim got married last year,” Patty tells her. He tries to walk her through the album, but she sees a flash of blond hair and blue eyes and nearly slams it shut on his fingers.

Pat doesn’t force it again, not after she disappears down the alleyways that still criss-cross Brooklyn for three weeks. She can’t even explain why, the lump of dread in her stomach, the sheer _panic_.

There’s Steve, and then there’s Pierce, and she knows they’re not the same. She _knows_.

It’s not like Pierce ever touched her, either, except for the slaps to get her attention. 

She can’t explain how he didn’t have to.

She remembers, is the thing. She remembers everything. But she can only remember what she lived through, and she lived through it _wrong_.

There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and she loves him. There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes she hates. There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and _they are the same man_ for all they aren’t.

“In sickness and in health, Bucky.” Pat had pushed the open photo album back onto her lap. “Do you think Steve didn’t mean it? I was there when he promised you that. Promised God that. Do you think he wouldn’t be here right now, if you’d let him?”

He would, of course he would. He would sit by her, and stay, and help her make herself useful, and is that not love?

Bucky had shoved the album on the floor by way of answer, and when Pat found her three weeks later there was something terrible in his face, something she had put there. “You died on me once,” he said, pointing his cane at her. “Don’t you dare try and do it again.”

She followed him home, and they don’t speak of it.

Patty has a fireplace in his apartment. It doesn’t work, of course—or rather, it has an electric heater inside it—but it lets him keep a mantlepiece draped in black, with framed photos of their parents, Sean, Jack, Jack’s wife Melissa, and a nephew Bucky never met.

Bucky’s photo, which was up there, has been moved to a side table, next to a photo that’s always face down when she visits.

Jack passed in ‘08, after graduating college on the G.I. Bill and working his way to upper management of a department store. His oldest, James Sr., fought in Vietnam before becoming a doctor, getting married, and lending lewd drawings of his aunt to the Smithsonian for the entire world to see. His daughter, Sierra, is a lawyer.

Henry died of AIDs in ‘83.

Bucky’s pretty sure she was on ice that entire year, while somewhere a world away her flesh and blood was withering into nothing.

Pat took her picture off the mantel, but he still has a wall of books written on her life. On her, on Steve, on the both of them. There’s movies made of her, with _Katherine Hepburn_ , there’s interviews with the 107th, with Peggy and Stark and Phillips and Gabe and Dum-Dum and. Her letters are there. Steve’s pictures. _My Grandfather’s Ghosts_ , by Jemma Dugan. _Howl_ , by Etienne Dernier. _My Sister Wore Combat Boots _.__

“Jack wrote a book?"

“Jack wrote a book about you.” 

Pat’s having a bad day; his hands shake and he keeps the cane nearby, even indoors. Bucky’d tucked him into his armchair with a horse blanket around his legs, and gone to fetch a book to read to him. 

Now it’s her hands shaking, as she opens it to read the dedication. _For my parents, who worked hard to give us a home; for Sean, the first to leave us, whose death nearly shattered our home forever; for Bucky and Steve, together in death as they were in life, who gave me a home to come back to._

_I took care of it, Buck. I promise._

“By the time I was old enough to remember anything,” Bucky reads, “Steve Rogers was already the fourth Barnes brother. He met my sister, the story goes, when he tried to knock down a bully who wouldn’t let her be, and got punched himself for his trouble. Bucky beat the kid up, and brought home what my mother, in her later years, called ‘the sorriest looking boy I’ve ever seen outside a hospital.’ Thus the pattern of my life before the War was set; by the time I was old enough to question why my sister’s best friend was a boy, Steve was already so deeply ingrained in our lives I couldn’t have imagined anything else. (I never questioned why Steve’s best friend was Bucky; if I were six years older I was sure she’d have been _my_ best friend too.) 

“Pat,” Bucky says. 

“What, you can’t even read about it? Words on a page, your own brother’s words?” Pat smooths the blanket on his lap. “I might never hear those words again if you don’t read them, you know. Old as I am. Hard to find the energy to read myself, and the light gets bad so quickly now. But never mind, never mind. I’ll be seeing Jack soon enough, I suppose, when the Lord calls me yonder.”

Bucky kisses the top his head, and keeps reading. “I could tell you Bucky was my favorite sibling, and it’s true, in a way. Certainly Sean had a lot of fun at my expense, as older brothers do, and Pat bothered me with attention, as younger brothers do. Bucky, by way of contrast, baked my favorite cookies and sewed up the rips in my pants so our mother wouldn’t find out and yell at me. But the truth is, my favorite was as much Steve as it ever was Bucky. 

“You see, even I couldn’t think of them as separate, or at least, they’re so entwined in my memory it makes no odds anyway. Bucky and Steve told us stories to entertain us, and saved up and took us to the movies, or Luna Park on Coney Island, and for my 16th birthday to see the Dodgers beat the stuffing outta the Giants. And not in Brooklyn, either. God bless them, they wanted to go on my actual birthday, so we took the subway all the way up to the Polo Grounds. Steve’s mother had passed about three weeks prior, and Dad gave me money to buy us all hot dogs. It didn’t occur to me until years later that he was worried about them, about the money they didn’t have to spend on me. I was 16 and selfish and all I remember is Ernie Koy hitting a home run in the top of the 4th, and how Steve kept an arm wrapped around Bucky’s back the whole game, even with the heat of August.”

* * * 

Pat’s bad days go, for awhile. Summer’s turned to autumn to the early days of winter, the air crisp enough that she doesn’t get looked at twice for wearing longsleeves in public. Not that people look at the homeless anyway, for the most part, but every little bit helps.

Bucky’s underneath her tree, sharing the last bits of a ham sandwich with Squirrel Steve when Sudsy finds her, tells her Father P’s collapsed at the soup kitchen. “His nephews took him home, but he was asking for you. Didn’t realize you two were so close.” 

She can’t breathe.

Pat—Pat’s got to be fine. He’s. She remembers when he was born, when Mama’d brought him home from the hospital (and how all the kids on the block thought they were so fancy, a hospital birth and everything, but Jack had been so difficult, Mrs. Mahoney’d told Daddy it was a wonder they both lived, and Daddy wasn’t taking any chances.) He’d been so small, such a wee little thing all wrapped up in white linens and waving his little hands. Bucky’d waited patiently while Daddy went to fetch Mama in Grandpa’s car; she’d kept Sean and Jack in line, too, kept their hands and faces clean, even, which was a miracle. Stevie’d come over and distracted Sean with marbles while Bucky read to Jack from _Dick and Jane_ , and then, then the car pulled up and Daddy honked and they ran to the window and waved and waved. And when Mama got upstairs, Daddy’s hand on her elbow, she placed her small bundle into Bucky’s arms and murmured, “gently,” and Pat had opened his eyes and she’d kissed his forehead, his little, wrinkled forehead, and he’s just got to be fine, that’s all. 

Sean’s gone now, and Jack, and Mama and Daddy and it isn’t right. It isn’t fair. Life ain’t ever fair, but not this. Not yet.

Her lungs are burning. Burning, pushing and she can’t. get. air.

There’s no ambulance outside. That’s good, that’s got to be good. They’d call an ambulance if he were really ill. If he needed the hospital. 

The door’s locked but Bucky’s got spare keys and she knows, she knows there’s gonna be people there, family, Jack’s family, but she can’t be bothered with caring. Not until she sees Pat. 

And then she hears him, before she can see anything, a cranky voice complaining, “I’m fine, I tell you! Just stood up a little too fast, that’s all. Stop fussing and fetch me—” 

“Pat. Patty.” He’s in his chair, blanket tucked up against the chill that rattles at the window panes, pushing away a mug of tea a brown-haired girl keeps trying to give him. He holds his hands out, and Bucky rushes forward, takes them in her own. “I thought.”

“Can’t get rid of me that easy.” Pat squeezes her hands and gives her the same cheeky grin she’s seen a hundred times from Sean and Jack, the one she gave Steve after inviting Bonnie and Connie to go dancing with them the night before she left for London. “I’ve got the Barnes constitution.” 

“You’ve got something, alright,” Bucky says. 

Someone coughs, and the brunette asks, “Uncle Patrick?” and Bucky. Bucky was a highly trained assassin. She had spent years honing an awareness of her surroundings, a hypersensitivity that was necessary to ensure a perfect record of mission success. 

She had completely failed to notice the ten other people crowded into Pat’s small apartment. 

“I—” 

Pat runs a gnarled thumb over her knuckles. “This is your Aunt Bucky,” he says, “who the Good Lord saw fit to give back to us. Don’t stand around staring like owls, I know you’ve all talked to Steve, now introduce yourselves like you were actually people with manners instead of what passes for polite on the internet. Big Jamie, you go first.”

“Hi,” a middle-aged man with her daddy’s nose and Jack’s chin says, “I’m James Barnes Senior. My wife, Eleanor. It’s. It’s an honor to meet you.” 

They go around the room, one after another, shaking her hand and calling her a hero. Their hero. 

“I’m not,” she doesn’t tell them, “I’m just a killer. A weapon.” Nor does she refuse to take Georgia from her grandmother’s arms, though she knows so many ways to kill an infant. The baby is good, quiet, and Bucky could snap her neck before anyone could react. Make it quick; make it peaceful. 

“Daddy would be proud,” is what she does say, and Sierra’s oldest smiles at her and takes the baby back. 

“And I’m Jim.” The last man she has yet to meet wraps an arm around the waist of a pretty blonde woman and adds, “this is my wife, Jemma. We’ve heard all the jokes already, but really, both of us were named for you.” 

“Jemma Dugan, such a pleasure to meet you.” Bucky’s eyes are caught by the play of light on Jemma’s engagement ring: a small, but intimately familiar diamond. 

_”I know the ring ain’t much, but I couldn’t wait . . .”_

_”I could draw you like this. You’re so gorgeous, Buck. Nothing on you but my ring, so beautiful.”_

_”Don’t lose it, now. I expect you to give it back to me, when this is over.”_

“I’m gonna kill him,” she says. “I’m. Patrick Barnes, you tell me where that—that— _asshole_ who calls himself a husband is this instant, you hear me? I suppose all those rumors of dates are true after all, ain’t they? _America’s Most-Eligible Bachelor Back On The Market_ , I’ll show _him_ the market, that no-good, cheating—I could’a married Michael Reilly, did you know that? He asked me. Think of that, Mike Reilly who owned his own pharmacy, _his_ wife didn’t have to go off to fight in the mud and the muck and—Daddy would’a sent me to college, too, let me get a real education instead of sewing shirts all day long and cleaning houses for—and scraping to put food on the table, not that he ever ate it, no, too busy _saving_ people and handing out—and not just people! The number of stray cats and mangy dogs that man dragged home—well I’ll mangy dog _him_ , thinks he can just— _Patrick Barnes you quit laughing this instant and tell me where he is!_ What is the _matter_ with you?” 

“Nothing,” Pat says, reaching for his cell phone and a pad of paper. “Not a blessed thing. I missed you, is all.” 

“I missed you too, brat. Now give me that address so I can beat some sense into the biggest jerk this side of the Brooklyn Bridge.” 

“About that . . .”

Bucky looks down at the paper Pat’s handed her.

At least it ain’t fucking Jersey. 

* * * 

It takes time, even for a skilled spy, to break into Avengers Tower. Her entry is hastened (but also made somewhat more disturbing) by the aid of the building itself, which for reasons unknown to her agrees not to tell anyone she’s there.

“Captain Rogers insisted,” is all it says. Exactly _what_ Captain Rogers insisted, the building does not elaborate on. 

To be fair, Bucky isn’t really inclined to ask.

What she _is_ inclined to do is make a beeline for the whiskey. It doesn’t do much for her, and Lord knows it must do even less for Steve, but Steve isn’t here and if Bucky knows her Starks, he’s been stocked with the good stuff, so what the hell.

The second thing she does, after knocking back the smoothest shit she’s had since possibly ever, is take her tumbler and the decanter to Steve’s kitchen table. 

The third thing she does is wait. 

It’s late by the time Steve comes home, long past supper. She’s sat, and drank, and watched the shadows creep across the kitchen floor, and it’s okay, it is, because there’s a crystal glass on the table instead of a gun, but it’s not okay at all. 

And then the lock on the front door clicks, and the door turns, and there’s the tread she used to know so well, the thunk as he puts his shield down and he doesn’t flip the lights on ‘cause he can see so well now, the ambient light through the window more than enough, and he’s been out late. Out doing who knows what with who knows who, and. 

“Where you been, Stevie?” 

The footsteps pause, and his head swivels. “Bucky?” 

He’s across the living room, through the open door and at her feet before she can blink. “Bucky,” he whispers, dropping to his knees and wrapping his arms around her waist, burying his face there. “Please, please don’t be mad. Bucky, please, sweetheart, I missed you so much, please, please—” whatever else he says is lost in choked off sobs.

“Steve.” She pushes the chair back, falls to the floor with him. “Steve. I’m here, I’m here.” 

His shoulders shake; his arms. He can’t stop crying, it seems like, just holds onto her and begs, _clings_ , and Bucky clings back. “I’m here,” she tells him, over and over, kisses it like a benediction into his temple, the top of his head. “I’m here,” she says, “I’ve got you.” 

She does, she has him, has him in her arms, her beautiful husband. There is a man with blond hair and blue eyes and she loves him and he is _hers_. “I’ve got you,” she tells him, promises him, “‘till the end of the line, Steve.” 

“Bucky,” he whispers, over and over. “Bucky, Bucky.” 

“I know. It’s okay, it is.” 

Steve makes a cut-off noise, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I let you die. I let you—and they—what about that is okay?” 

“But I didn’t die.” She cups his face in her hands, tilts his head up enough to see his face and he still looks at her with shining eyes, looks at her like she just punched Tommy Miller right in the kisser. “Steve,” she says, brushing the tears from his cheeks, “I’m right here, and I ain’t going anywhere.” 

“Promise?” 

“Before God and everyone.” 

He surges forward, kisses her, and if it tastes like salt-water and whiskey, well. It feels like coming home. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the always amazing[Laura Kaye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye) for the beta -- all mistakes left are mine, not hers!
> 
> Sorry for the looooong delay between chapters, and thanks for sticking with me -- I have a new, far less horrible job, so it shouldn't be NEARLY as long until the next update.

_”You see, Captain, we have taken everything from you. Your legacy, your values, even your wife. The Winter Soldier, history’s greatest assassin, the fist of Hydra, once was known as Bucky Barnes. Now she will be known as the woman who killed Captain America. Sergeant Barnes, complete your mission.”_  
_”My name is_ Mrs. Rogers! _”_  
Sir Ben Kingsley as Arnim Zola/The Algorithm and Kristen Stewart as Bucky  
Bucky _, 2016_

The bed is softer than anything Bucky can remember sleeping on, but fortunately Steve’s stupid shoulders are still bony under all that muscle, so she pushes as close as she can, drapes herself over his chest, and is out like a light.

She wakes a few hours later, to the sound of muffled crying. Steve tangles his fingers in her hair, tries to keep her right there on top of him, but she needs to see his face. Needs to run a thumb under his eyes, to kiss his forehead. “C’mon, asshole.” He huffs a laugh, so it works, and Bucky rolls to the side, scoots up so her head’s on his pillow and they’re almost nose-to-nose.

“Hey,” Steve whispers. His lashes are spiky and his eyes rimmed in red; sometime in the last seventy years he learned how to cry pretty, or maybe that was the serum. 

Bucky brushes a spike of hair back off his forehead. “Missed you, you jerk.”

“I missed you too. I thought—we’ve been chasing down Hydra bases, but you weren’t—”

“Brooklyn. With Pat.”

Steve gets that crease between his eyes. “He never said.”

“I wasn’t ready. Had to be ready before I could see you, you know?”

“I don’t,” Steve says. He reaches out, links the fingers of his hand with hers. “You can tell me, though. You can tell me anything, Buck. I—I hope you know that.”

“Not everything,” she says. Most things—the important things, maybe—but not. Not everything. Not the sound of a little boy’s last, shattered breath before she snapped his neck. Not the pride she felt when Pierce dropped a hand on her shoulder and said she’d done a good job. Not the comfort when Lukin called her his good little—not everything.

Steve clenches his jaw, because the serum amplified everything and he was already a stubborn bastard long before Erskine and Stark got their paws on him. “Everything. I mean it, Bucky. I don’t care, it won’t—it won’t change anything, between us. Nothing they did to you, nothing they made you do.”

“They didn’t _make_ me do anything; I chose to do it.”

“They would’ve tortured you if you didn’t.”

“Yes,” Bucky says. Steve frowns, lets go of her hand to cup her cheek in his palm. “It was a choice, Steve. A bad one, maybe, but I made it and I’ve gotta live with it now. You don’t.”

“I’ll live with whatever you give me. I—you don’t know, what it’s been like. Without you. I missed you so goddamn much, I swear. Whatever you wanna give me, I will take it and I will live with it with you.”

Bucky rolls away from him, sits up. “Maybe I don’t want you to, you ever think of that? While you were out there running down Hydra bases, reading whatever intel you could get your hands on, you ever think maybe that was a thread that didn’t need pulling?”

Steve shifts behind her. His legs come down on either side of hers, and he presses up behind her slowly enough that she has plenty of time to stand, move away. She doesn’t, though she can’t quite stop herself from stiffening.

“I didn’t mean to—invade your privacy.” Steve kisses the back of her neck. “I missed you,” he says, voice low, almost too soft for even her enhanced hearing to pick up. “I needed to know, Buck. I needed—whatever I could get. Any of it. All of it. When you—fell. I thought I’d lost you. I thought. And then my plane went down and—at least I was going to see you again. You and Ma and Sean, only when I woke up it wasn’t—” Steve rests his head against her shoulder, breathes in and out. His hands curl around her stomach, hitching her closer to him. “I missed you,” he says.

“I didn’t. I mean, I did, I would’a, but.”

“I know. It’s okay, Buck. I know—I saw the chair. I know.”

Bucky does pull away then, only Steve holds on. Not enough to stop her if she really wanted to go, but enough. Enough. “You know nothing.”

“So _tell_ me.” He pushes her hair over her right shoulder—when did her hair get so long?—and kisses the back of her neck. “Please, Buck. I swear, it’s okay. Did Pierce— _touch_ you?”

Bucky’s laugh startles both of them. She can’t help it, can’t stop. She doubles over, lets Steve turn her, slide them both onto the floor so she’s in his lap, clinging to him. He rocks her like a child, runs a hand up and down her back and her shoulders are shaking and he must think she’s gone bananas or something.

“You mean,” she gasps when she can catch her breath again, “did we have sex? That what you’re asking, Stevie? Did Hydra rape me?”

Steve’s voice is even, steady. “Did they?” he asks, tilting her face up so he can see her. So she can see him, clear blue eyes and the hint of stubble, hair still stupidly perfect despite coming fresh from a full night’s sleep. He’s so patient, so careful, like she’s made of porcelain instead of metal. She wants to hit him.

“Would _you_ rape a dog?” Steve recoils, and Bucky’s across the room before he has a chance to recover. “No,” she says. “They didn’t rape me. They didn’t have to. All they had to do was parade Pierce in front of me, blond hair and blue eyes and let me tell you, Steve, he was a pussycat. A real swell gent, so concerned with my concentration gaps and I knew by then, I knew there was something wrong with me, but Pierce helped me make myself _useful_ , like Eileen Feeley with her grandmother, may she rest in peace, can’t leave her to bake the cake, ‘cause she might forget to turn the oven off and burn us in our beds but she can crack the eggs and stir ‘em, lick the bowl clean like a child after all eager for chocolate and—no. No, Hydra didn’t rape me. Russians didn’t either, and they were a sight more vicious but I was a sight more trouble so it evened out, didn’t it? Trained me up good, they did, addle-pated and ready for the chair like a dog for a bone, wasn’t I? Kept me from getting _irregular_ , and it never stopped hurting but after, after the pain just leeched away, put it on ice and cut her tongue out if she won’t shut up. Christ,” Bucky adds, rubbing a hand—her right hand—over her face. “Don’t look at me like that, it grew back. Obviously. Anyway, Hydra gave me a mouthguard.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Steve chokes out.

Bucky scowls. “This is why I didn’t want to—why d’you gotta make a production out of everything, huh, Stevie? It is what it is, and I’m _fine_ , so just—”

“If you’re so fine, why did it take you months to see me again?”

“Why’d you give away my diamond ring?”

“What?”

Bucky laughs. It’s that or cry, and she’s done with crying. “You promised me,” she says. She crosses the room and pokes Steve in the chest. “Kept it right there, with your tags and your ring—and don’t think I didn’t notice right away you ain’t got that resized yet, either. You promised. But there it was on some strange girl’s finger—”

“ _Jemma_? Dum-Dum’s—she married our _nephew_ , Buck. You were dead, are you seriously—”

“You _promised_. And then next thing you’re in all the rags dating who knows what _hussies_ and tomcatting all over the city like—like _Howar_ —”

Steve kisses her before she can stop, just surges up and cups her face between his oversized mitts and bends her over. He never could do that before the war, envelop her like Clark Gable, and God knows they didn’t have the time for necking while trudging through the mud in Europe, but he’s a natural. Or else he’s been practicing, only dames don’t kiss like this now, half-helpless and limp while their fella holds them up and makes them melt all at the same time. Bucky clings to him, after, buries her face in his shoulder. “That your first kiss since 1945, Stevie?”

“First that counts,” Steve murmurs. “Why, you got complaints?”

“What if I do?”

He brushes a hand over her head, tangles his fingers in her hair. “Guess I’ll just have to keep practicing,” he says, and tilts her chin up for another kiss.

“Well,” Bucky says, “if you gotta.”

* * *

Later, Steve drags her upstairs to meet Tony. Bucky doesn’t want to go—how do you shake hands with the son of a man you fought beside 70 years ago and killed 45 years later?—but she also doesn’t want Steve out of her sight. Besides, she’s lured the man’s building into aiding and abetting her break-in; the least she can do is apologize for making him an orphan.

“Wasn’t you,” Stark says, and hands her a snifter of brandy that probably cost more than a month’s rent on Steve and her’s first apartment. 

“Kinda was.”

“Yeah, not really big on blaming the victim of brainwashing and torture for actions taken while under the influence. There’s this crazy concept in the law, my attorneys taught me all about it for—reasons that aren’t important right now—the point is, you weren’t in charge of your own body. Now, Alexander Pierce and Obadiah Stane? Drink that, it’ll put hair on Steve’s chest.”

Bucky obediently sips her brandy, and arches an eyebrow in Steve’s direction. Because he’s an asshole, Steve just shrugs.

Tony, she discovers, is exactly like Howard in all the good ways, and not at all like him in all the better ways. He’s also extremely persistent about examining Bucky’s arm.

“I can tell him to stop,” Pepper offers. Pepper is one of Bucky’s new favorite people, mostly because the first time they met she held out her hand and said, “Mrs. Rogers, it’s an honor, I’ll do my best not to accidentally light you on fire. Or on purpose. Or at all, really.”

“It’s alright,” Bucky tells her now. “If he gets to be a bother I’ll hit him over the head with a rolled up newspaper.”

Still, she likes hanging out in Tony’s workshop. He has real robots that can listen to orders and try to help him and when he threatens to sell them to City College they spray him with fire extinguishers and _are still there the next morning_. Also, the building, which is apparently named Jarvis for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with one of Tony’s favorite parental substitutes, sometimes tells Bucky what it is they’re thinking, because they communicate telepathically.

“It’s not telepathic,” Steve says, “there’s. There’s this thing, now, called the internet, it’s like a library of all the computers in the world connected over phone lines and cable and—” Bucky lets him get to explaining earnestly about how text messaging is like telegrams from your phone before she cracks up and he hits her with a pillow. “You’re such an _ass_.”

“ _Me?_ You should’a seen your _face_ , I didn’t think it could _get_ any dumber, Rogers.”

Tony backs away slowly. Apparently it creeps him out when they insult each other, like he’s never been childhood friends with anyone before or something. Of course, he calls Colonel Rhodes “gum drop” and “huggy bear,” so maybe it’s just a generational thing, but it seems to disturb the other Avengers, too. Sam says they way they were described, the way Steve spoke about her, everyone expected him to idolize her or something, and vice-versa. Like she thought he walked on water.

“Steve’s pretty great,” Bucky says, “but mostly at being a real jerk. Do you know how much work I put into that man?” 

Then Steve mutters something about know-it-all brats with expectations of grandeur—”It’s _delusions_ ,” Tony complains—and Bucky has to tackle him. They’ve never been matched before, physically, but what extra height and muscle he has from being male is more than made up for by her arm. It takes awhile, but she gets him pinned eventually, straddles his waist with both wrists in her hand and Steve all hard and taut beneath her. 

“What’re you gonna do now, Buck?” he asks. Somewhere in the wrestling everyone else left the room, so it’s just her and Steve when she leans down to claim a kiss. She cups his face in her hands, and he sits up, like it’s nothing, like her left hand isn’t ghosting over bones she crushed not that many months ago, her right hand curled around his neck where she could squeeze and squeeze and Steve slides his own hands under her ass, surges upright with her legs around his waist and when he walks her backwards into their bedroom she doesn’t feel matched at all, anymore, just small and breakable and _human_.

“I got a roast in the oven,” she murmurs while he kisses her cheeks and her ears.

“That what they’re calling it now?”

“Oh my _God_ , Steve.”

Steve just laughs and keeps unbuttoning her blouse, trailing kisses down her breastbone and over the lacy edges of her brassiere. “You know you love it,” he says, and Bucky does. 

“I do,” she tells him, “I love you, asshole.”

“Love you too,” Steve says, and then neither of them are capable of speaking for a good long time.

* * *

Bucky’s met just about all of the Avengers—there’s some weirdness with the Director of SHIELD who is an honorary posthumous Avenger but not really dead but he doesn’t want them to know he’s alive and they don’t want him to know they know so they can stick it to him when he finally reveals himself and Steve can be disapproving at him, it’s all very confusing—when the world meets her. Or re-meets. Discovers she’s alive, as her, Bucky, and not just the D.C. Terrorist, and that they are one and the same, or something.

It’s also confusing.

Clint says that’s because people are assholes who wouldn’t understand PTSD if it shot an apple off their heads while wearing sparkly purple sequins and riding a horse bareback. Clint is one of her new favorite people too, not because he can set things on fire with the power of his rage, but because he loves her meatloaf nearly as much as Steve does and is the only other human who eats enough to satisfy her. Tony tries, but always ends up rolling away from the dinner table with a pained look in his eyes and half of his third serving still untouched. Bruce just says thank-you and stops at seconds, and Natasha has always eaten like a bird, as far back as Bucky can remember, ever since she was—Clint, though. Clint eats and eats and lets her load him up with tupperware and pulls his plate close, arm curled around it, like every starving child she ever knew. 

Clint gets the extra helpings of dessert whenever there should happen to be some, except when Sam is there because Bucky nearly killed Sam by destroying his wings and that is the kind of thing that takes multiple pecan pies to apologize for. Or when Pat is visiting; Pat always gets extra everything, now that Bucky doesn’t live on his couch or his block or his borough.

Pat’s the only non-Avenger in the building when the world finds out about Bucky, it being his usual Tuesday visit. (She doesn’t know why Tuesdays, only that he showed up her first Tuesday in Manhattan, hand shaking a little on his cane, unable to look Steve in the eye until Bucky had bundled him into an armchair with a blanket tucked around his lap and a mug of hot tea, no milk two sugars, and she’d glared at Steve and Steve had sighed and thanked Pat for looking after her, and then she’d glared some more because she was perfectly capable of looking after herself.) Pat’s the only one, but then in short order he isn’t, at all, mobs of people surrounding the building shouting at each other, _”Arrest the D. C. Terrorist!”_ and _”Free Bucky Barnes!”_ and _”Murderer!”_ and _”Safety for P.O.W.s!”_ and a ton of other things lost in the background noise of the tv news. 

They want to take her to jail. The FBI and the NSA, they want to lock her up, and the Director calls to bring her to SHIELD, and the Army wants to give her a lawyer, which is surprising, but not as surprising as the crazy amounts of money they claim she’s owed in back-pay. Anyway, they want to take her, and when Steve tries to stop them it turns out they ain’t even married anymore, under the law, something about being declared dead over half a decade ago. They want to take her, and they want to make Steve testify against her, and it’s not going to happen. It’s not.

“Of course it isn’t,” Steve says. He slips an arm around her back, but she shrugs him off, too pent up to sit still and play the good wife.

Bucky tells him, “No. I mean, I ain’t going. I’m—I don’t care who it is, not the Feds or the Army and especially not SHIELD. I’m not going, Steve, do you understand me. It ain’t gonna happen. They had me long enough.”

“Phil Coulson’s a good man. He wouldn’t work for Hydra.”

“You did.”

“That’s not fair,” Steve says. 

Bucky turns away from the window, from the view of the crowd below, still chanting and waving signs and she stares Steve Rogers right in the face, that same stupid face that got punched by Tommy Miller, that same stupid expression of shock and hurt and _righteousness_. “Don’t you _dare_ tell me what’s fair, Steven Rogers. I swear to God—”

“ _What_? What do you swear? You think just because you were their tool, you’re the only one—you think this just happened to you? You _died_ on me, Buck, you _died_ and I had to go on living—”

“Well you fucked that right up, didn’t you? Go on living, for how long? How long before you drove that plane right into the ice and which one of us died _then_? There I was on what passed for an operating table, half-mad with pain and I didn’t even speak Russian but I sure could read a headline. Didn’t take much to break me after all, just the right set of words, so who died on who, Steve, huh?”

Steve launches to his feet, his face white and red in turns and _God_ , God she wants to hit him in those perfect fucking teeth that science and magic and the fucking U.S. Army gave him. She wants to hit him so bad she feels her knuckles creak, and Sam Wilson is as big a fucking idiot as her ex-husband/widower/decedent must be, jumping between them with his palms out, seeking _peace_. “Let’s all take some deep breaths,” he says, “and count to ten.”

She’s tired, she’s so tired, and hell, they’ve never had an apartment before that was big enough to go sulk in separate rooms, not since they were children. It turns out slamming the door is exactly as cathartic as she remembers, especially now that she has the strength to make the entire wall shake (sorry, Jarvis).

The rest of it is strangely dissatisfying.

Steve knocks on the door an hour later. He waits for her to say it’s okay before inching the door open and peering round the edge. He even waits for her to say it’s okay before sitting next to her on the bed, before resting a hand on the curve of her spine. 

“I’m not letting anyone take you from me, sweetheart.”

Bucky wants to curl away from him, to lean into his palm, to be alone and together and she’s not his sweetheart. She isn’t even his wife, apparently. 

Steve doesn’t expect an answer, though, or maybe he doesn’t care. Either way, he rubs small circles in her back, and she’d forgot how hot he runs, since the serum, the pad of his thumb radiating warmth through the thin layer of her blouse. “I won’t lose you again,” he murmurs. “I can’t, and I’m not going to let it happen. You and me, Buck, we haven’t reached the end of that line yet, and you’re stuck with me. I don’t care what the government says, you’re my _wife_ , and no one on God’s green earth is going to rip you from me and give you back to Hydra. No one, you understand?”

She can’t answer him. Everything’s roiling in her head and her stomach; her tongue won’t move and she can hardly swallow around it, but she rolls over, presses her face against his leg. Steve must know what she’s saying anyway. He strokes her hair, her neck, her back, over and over, keeps murmuring that she’s safe, she’s home, she’s his, and by the time she falls asleep she almost believes it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for the delay, folks! It's because I've been working on my Big Bang story, which is clocking in at over 42k... and thanks for sticking with me! the end is in sight, and I'm glad so many of you love this story as much as I do.

_”In the end there’s nothing_  
_But this train we’re on_  
_We’ll ride this train together_  
_’Till the end has come and gone_  
_If you put your hand in mine_  
_(I can reach you, I can try)_  
_We’ll make this journey fine_  
_(Don’t let me fall)_  
_We’ll ride on together_  
_(Don’t let me…)_  
_To the end of the line._  
-Debbie Reynolds as Bucky Barnes and Gene Kelly as Steve Rogers  
To The End Of The Line, _Original Broadway Production, 1954_  
_Music by Richard Rodgers and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein_

Tony’s pocket collection of attorneys put their heads together with Bucky’s JAG lawyer and get the judge to grant her house arrest. She’s got a cuff on one ankle and a tracker on her arm, but she’s also got windows and a ten-block-radius and _Steve_. On the whole, she’ll take it. 

“The prosecution can try to paint you as a criminal all they like,” Major Willis says, “you’re this nation’s longest-serving P.O.W. and the first active-duty servicewoman to receive the Medal of Honor, so fuck them.”

Steve is nodding along, all yeah! Fuck the man!, but Bucky’s still hung up on—”I’m the what now?”

“Medal of Honor. I’ve got it in my bag somewhere, hang on. President Truman gave it to your parents, of course, beautiful ceremony—you should watch sometime, it’s on the History Channel at least twice a year, not to mention Netflix—and then your brothers donated it to the Smithsonian, but of course—ah! Here we go.” She hands Bucky a long blue box like it’s no big deal. Maybe it isn’t, maybe the country’s mostly forgotten by now, but. 

“I don’t—I’m not—”

“Of course you are, Sergeant Major. If I may, you’re the reason most of the women I know joined the armed services—or the reason their mothers did, anyway. You gave 70 years of your life in service of your country, during which you were injured, captured, and tortured beyond the limits of human endurance. That you are here, alive and sane, is a miracle, and if the United States government—or any other country, for that matter—thinks they can lock you away, all I can say is, they’ll have a hell of a fight on their hands.”

Bucky can’t exactly tell a major she’s ridiculous, so she doesn’t say anything. Steve squeezes her hand, and clearly Major Willis meets with his approval (whatever _that’s_ worth) because he doesn’t even argue when she shoos him out of the room in order to preserve attorney-client privilege. He does propose they get remarried, but Bucky tells him frankly that if he thinks she’ll marry him just for the sake of a _lawsuit_ , he’s a bigger mook than what anyone ever thought him. She also bursts into tears, which flusters him; after that it’s easy to push him out the door and lock it firmly behind him.

“Sorry about him,” she tells the major. “He means well, but he’s been running around without minding for what, three years now? Someone ought to’ve slapped him upside the head a good thirty months ago.”

When the legal confab’s over, though, Steve’s waiting on actual bended knee, like a complete and utter asshole. Barton, Wilson, and Romanoff are perched on various bits of furniture (the back of the couch, the couch, and the _coffee table people eat off of_ , because they are also assholes and, presumably, know a good thing when it’s about to happen in front of their faces.

“No,” Bucky says.

“Buck—”

“You heard me.”

Steve grabs her wrist, holds it to his face. “You can’t believe it’s just for the legal stuff. You _know_ it’s not, sweetheart—”

Bucky yanks her hand back. “How many times I gotta say no? Ain’t that a thing these days? Flyboy, ain’t that a thing?”

Sam tries to disappear into the couch cushions, so Clint kicks him in the back. “It’s a thing,” Major Willis says.

“There.” Bucky marches past the roomful of idiots to show Major Willis out like her mama taught her. Behind her, she can hear six feet shuffling away, and one lone captain sinking all the way to the floor. She can practically feel his eyes burning into her, the mix of anger, confusion and despair rolling off him in waves. The door is firm; good strong metal that’s cool against her forehead. “Stevie. Ask me again when I’m free. Okay?”

“...Yeah,” he says. He slips up behind her, tugs her back against his chest so he can wrap those stupid long arms around her and lean his cheek on the top of her head. “That’s okay, Buck. That’s just fine.”

* * *

Romanoff finds her in the stairway three days later by sliding down the bannister in a move that would’ve got Bucky smacked by a righteously angry mother back when she was young enough to enjoy things like sliding down bannisters. Steve’s out for once, dragged on a run by Wilson, who’s clearly masochistic, and Tony, who’s “pacing” them with his flying suit, because he’s too smart to go running with Steve but not smart enough to mass produce the flying cars his daddy promised everyone seventy years ago. Bucky had used Steve’s absence as an excuse to bake Clint an entire meatloaf because he’d been looking peaky lately. She’d expected him to divvy up most of it for later—this new-fangled tupperware thing is _dynamite_ —but he pretty much ate all of it in one go. So Bucky’s in a kind of soft spot, thinking about how that man needs to eat more in general, and a lot less pizza in particular, when Natasha swings off the bannister and lands on her feet, inches from Bucky’s face.

Bucky doesn’t use her arm to shove Romanoff against the wall by her throat, but it’s kind of a near thing.

“We need to talk.”

“We talk all the time,” Bucky says. “We live in the same Jarvis.”

Romanoff makes a face. “No,” she says, “we need to _talk_.”

Bucky doesn’t mind talking to people who aren’t Steve. She used to have a lot of friends, back before the war, used to gossip with the girls at the factory, play jacks in the street or jump rope and sing. And during the war, well. She wouldn’t ever say she was the heart of the Howling Commandos, but from what she’s read everyone else said it for her.

But she doesn’t _talk_ to anyone who hasn’t shared a last name with her at some point in their lives. That’s the whole point of family, really. When they want to make you _discuss_ things, you gotta at least pretend to listen and maybe pat them on the back and offer up a mostly clean handkerchief and some advice.

Still, she probably owes Romanoff—no, she _definitely_ does, not Natasha, but Natalia, with red hair and a willingness to die for the Motherland. She can still feel those little hands scrabbling up her back, see that small body slam headfirst into the ground, and she can hear the bullet pushing through flesh to reach the target behind the redhead’s body—there was a gun, and a bodyguard, and Bucky swallows and steps back. “So,” she says, “let’s talk.”

Natasha sits on the steps, pats the space to her side. When Bucky’s next to her, she takes Bucky’s left hand in hers and runs her fingers along the plates where lifetimes ago Nadia with the curly wisps of hair had jammed a knife and pulled. “Why won’t you marry Steve?”

“I will. After.” Natasha raises an eyebrow. Bucky clenches her jaw. “If they lock me up,” she says, “he shouldn’t be. He’s free, right now.”

“He’s really not.”

Bucky looks away, at the wall. The Catholic sacrament of marriage still stands, according to Pat, but it doesn’t matter, not really. She’ll either get the death penalty or life without parole, that much is obvious, and if it’s the latter. If it’s the latter, that’s worse. The length of her lifespan, that’s a lot of time for someone to dig up Hydra’s machines, or the Red Room’s, and she’s not going to let that happen, so. One way or another, either she’ll be free, or Steve will.

“He’s not going to remarry,” Natasha says. “He wouldn’t even date anyone, and that’s when you’d been dead for seventy years.”

Bucky surges to her feet. “That’s not on me. If he’s a stubborn, bull-headed idiot who can’t let go of the past then—”

“He’s exactly the man you married?”

“I’ve done my best by him.” Bucky sits again, scrubs a hand over her face. “It wasn’t always easy, but I tried. I worshipped that man, you don’t. You don’t know. All through the Depression, all the times he wouldn’t back down in the face of—anything. The war, god, wearing a goddamn bullseye for a shield and hurling himself into. And even. Even after, I. He’s. He’s gotta be free, Nat. I’m not 19 anymore, I’m not who he wants, or needs, and I guess if I’m out, if they let me, I’m just selfish enough to hang onto him, but if they don’t. He deserves more ‘n a burnt out shell of a person. I’m not. I’m not worth all this. He should have someone who can give him a home, a family—”

“—Ah,” Natasha says.

“And what’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

Natasha runs her fingers up Bucky’s left arm again, finds unerringly the spot where the plates had been pounded back into shape by an angry technician. “Do you know what we used to call you, behind the matron’s back?”

Bucky swallows. In her mind’s eye, she sees a courtyard of little girls, dead or bleeding, and herself in the middle, choosing which few should be saved. “I can only imagine,” she says.

“Медведица,” Natasha says. “Mother Bear.”

“That’s obscene.”

“That’s _life_. Don’t you remember what you used to tell us, every night when our training ended?”

“Blood is for handlers, life is for Russia, love is for children.”

“Love is for children,” Natasha repeats. “Did you think we didn’t listen?”

* * *

Later, when she and Steve are curled up in bed together and JARVIS has made it so dark even Bucky’s night vision has trouble seeing more than silhouettes, she whispers, “hey, Stevie?” and Steve, because he loves her, whispers back, “Yeah, Buck?” instead of pointing out he was just about to sleep.

Bucky takes his hand from where it was tucked under his cheek, turns it over so she can run her index finger along his palm. “You remember, when you asked me to marry you, the first time, you remember I. I asked you to do something too? To wait, until I was ready to have. To.”

“It was nothing I didn’t want to do,” Steve says. That is a dirty lie, and Bucky has no compunction telling Steve exactly that, because she’s known since she was nine and they talked about the future how much Steve’s always wanted a family, but—”Nothing’s more important than you, Buck. Nothing ever was.” 

Bucky sits up straight, right there in her lace-and-cotton nightgown. “Steve Rogers.”

“No, I mean it. I used to think—well, I used to be an idiot. But this body, this—science experiment—aw, hell Buck. I know I said I had a duty to lay down my life, to do what I could, I know. I thought about that a lot since you fell. All the things I said, ‘cause it turns out—” Steve’s voice hitches, and he sniffs, just once, the way he does when he’s trying not to cry. “Not much point in saving the world if it gets me a world without you in it, Bucky. God. If I could’ve gone back to ‘41, gone back and taken that first 4-F, and we’d just. Grown old together, you and me, I swear to God I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky whispers, her own voice half-strangled. 

Steve tugs her back down to the bed, throws an arm across her middle and pillows his head on her breast. “Told you,” he says, “I’m no good without you. Anyway, I remember, and as long as I’ve got you, Buck, that’s all the family I need.”

They lie like that in the dark, pressed together. Steve falls asleep to the rhythm of her heartbeat, and Bucky strokes her left hand through his hair, over and over, long past his slide to unconsciousness.

* * *

The trial dawns on a bright Monday morning. Major Willis and Tony’s coterie have warned Bucky that it won’t be pretty. “Whatever we may believe,” the major says, “there’s a large quantity of the country that’s out for blood. They’re going to do their damnedest to make you the scapegoat for all the Hydra members they can’t get their hands on.”

“I know what I did,” Bucky says.

“You do,” the major agrees. “And you’ll have to live with that, I’m afraid. But doing a thing and being legally—or morally—responsible for having done it are not the same thing.”

“You’ve been talking with Wilson,” Bucky says.

The major shrugs, but doesn’t deny it.

Regardless, the trial begins, and it’s everything the lawyers said it would be. Worse, almost, except that nothing could be worse than what Bucky’s already been through. 

Her saving grace is that the government’s witnesses tend to be analysts and members of defense agencies. No one is called who was actually in Hydra, let alone calling the shots for the Winter Soldier, figuratively or otherwise. No one who worked on her arm. No one who worked on her brain.

Major Willis grills what witnesses the government _does_ produce, hammering at them like the verbal equivalent of Mjolnir until they admit there’s no way to determine from their data and videos whether Bucky was acting under duress, or in her right mind, or with any intent to kill, or to betray her country. Even so, the tide of the nation turns against her.

“Just wait until our turn,” the major insists. “Once we tell our story, they’ll fall back in love with you. They want to. They’re looking—begging—for any straw to hold onto. This nation’s been in love with you and Steve for seventy years; they’re not going to stop now.”

“If you say so,” Bucky says, thinking of the gun she quietly liberated from Natasha’s stash and hid where Steve won’t find it. Just in case.

“I do says so. And if all else fails, so do our surprise character witnesses.”

“Our _what_?”

On the third day of presenting their principal case, the defense calls, one after the other, Sergeant Timothy Aloysius Dugan and Corporal Gabriel Jones.

* * *

“Bucky Barnes—excuse me, Rogers. Seventy years, but I’m still not used to that one, hey Sarge?—where was I? Oh, yeah. Bucky Rogers is one of the bravest, most loyal people I’ve ever met. When we were P.O.W.s, she kept us all together. Made us talk to each other, ‘cause we were all mixed up from different units and different armies. See, Gabe and I—that’s Gabriel Jones—we’d suspected for awhile that Buck was a woman, and we tried to isolate the three of us, to keep her safe. But Buck’d have none of that nonsense, said we were all in it together against Hydra and we’d need each other to survive. She hated Hydra. Never did know what those bastards did to her—not until the—what do you call it? Info-dump. But nobody hated Hydra like Buck. Well, Cap came close, after she died. Fell. But for Steve, for all of us, that was grief, I think. For Buck, her hatred was personal. Well, all you had to do was look at her, when Cap dragged her outta that hellhole.”

“Objection! Witness cannot testify to the mental and emotional state of others.”

“Your Honor, Sergeant Dugan is testifying as to his opinion.”

“Then he had better restrict himself to that. Overruled—for now. . . .”

It goes on like that for what seems like an eternity as first Dum-Dum and then Gabe spend all day testifying that Bucky practically walked on water and would never have willingly lifted so much as a finger to help Hydra.

“Corporal,” the prosecution tries at one point, “you never actually _saw_ Arnim Zola, or anyone else from Hydra, torture the defendant, did you?”

“Well they didn’t haul her off for fun—”

“No, they didn’t. They ‘hauled her off’, to use your words, because she was sick, didn’t they?”

“That was an excuse, we all knew it. No one ever returned from isolation.”

“No one who was so sick they needed to be isolated from the rest of the prisoners, in a work camp filled with what you and Sergeant Dugan have testified were ‘bugs, germs, famine, and bastards who never heard of the Geneva Convention,’ ever recovered enough to be put back to work, is that right?”

“Listen, sonny—”

“In fact, the defendant was running a high fever and hallucinating, isn’t that correct?”

“Yes, but—”

“So in fact, what Hydra did, as far as you _actually know_ , is isolate a sick prisoner, who later appeared so healthy she could survive a fall that would kill anyone else on earth—except, perhaps, for Captain America?”

“Son,” Gabe says, in all his 93-year-old dignity, “if you’re trying to imply that Sergeant Major Rogers was working for Hydra inside that hellhole—sorry, Your Honor—then you can, and please feel free to quote me on this, go fuck yourself.”

“Objection! Your Honor!”

It goes on like that all day, a back and forth between the prosecution, on one side, and two cranky, wrinkled, _beloved_ war heroes on the other. Bucky’s own lawyers hardly have to do anything, it feels like, just point Dum-Dum and Gabe to the witness box and sit back smugly. But then, Bucky doesn’t really take any of it in. She’s too busy staring. Too busy trying desperately not to cry. They’re dead, is the thing. She knows they are; she was told so on multiple occasions. Wasn’t she? But then, she skipped that part of the Smithsonian, couldn’t bear it, and she never looked at Little Jim and Jemma’s wedding album, not when there would be pictures of Steve inside. Pat never tried to make her, not after that first time.

More fool her.

When his turn in the witness box ends, Dum-Dum, leaning heavily on a cane, resplendent in his dress uniform, pauses by the defense table to pat her on the cheek. When she loses her fight against tears, he swipes a thumb under her eye and kisses her forehead.

It makes all the papers and the evening news. That, and Gabe squeezing her hands as he rolls his wheelchair down the aisle. “Courage, Sarge,” he whispers. “There ain’t nothing you can’t do, remember?”

After that, the judge calls a recess for the rest of the day, and Steve whisks Bucky home where she can fall apart in private.

“They’re in a home,” he tells her, once he’s bundled her into bed. “Out in California. I thought you knew, or—sweetheart. Buck. We’ll see them again, I promise. Tony’s putting them up in the _Plaza_ , they’re having a great time, charging room service and just as soon as you’re free we’ll go spend the whole day—or have them here, whichever you prefer. Bucky. Hey. Okay?”

Bucky just clings to him, overwhelmed and exhausted and completely wrung out. She should eat something, or wipe her make-up off, but it’s all she can do keep everything at bay. Azzano, and the first time Zola got his filthy mitts on her, and before that even, all the killing when she still didn’t really know—anything—and after, after, every time she mentioned a big man with a mustache and a bowler who loved her, or a black man who spoke multiple languages and knew electronics and loved her, every time, Lukin or Pierce telling her they were dead, Pierce never _saying_ outright (why?) but implying it was her fault, somehow (Lukin wouldn’t—for Lukin she was perfect, she had to be perfect, but Pierce built her up and knocked her down all in one breath) and then sending her to the chair for recalibration, reinforcing that it was punishment, that remembering Gabe or Dugan was bound up in failure and pain and recrimination. It’s all there, just waiting to roll over her and she can’t—she can’t. So she curls against Steve, small as she can make herself, and presses her nose to his collarbone and breathes and breathes and breathes, until she falls asleep to his steady heartbeat and the warmth of his arms around her.

* * *

Bucky wakes to a world gone crazy. Crazier, anyway.

Near as she can figure, it started when Lady Helena Falsworth Portenoy had breakfast with the queen, and Her Majesty issued the fifth Royal Pardon since the end of World War II. Ireland quickly followed suit, as did Australia, New Zealand, and most of the sovereign nations of Europe. Vladimir Putin went on record denying that Russia or the Soviet Union had knowledge of Hydra activity within their borders, but that nonetheless they, like all civilized nations, would not seek retribution for acts committed by Hydra prisoners while brainwashed, tortured, or held in captivity.

Unlike the other members of Avengers Tower, who weren’t raised to know better (or, in some of their cases, raised at all), Bucky and Steve never watch television while eating.

They make an exception over breakfast.

It’s a larger meal than usual, since their floor is invaded by—everyone, really. Tony and Pepper bring bagels. Sam brings three gallons of orange juice. Bruce, Natasha, and Clint bring themselves. Thor isn’t stateside, or doubtless he would bring a stomach able to eat more than even Steve can.

Bucky makes a mountain of eggs, french toast, and bacon, and sets her giant coffee urn percolating on the sideboard. It’s electric, which is already one up on the one from her childhood.

“Is that a _stovetop percolator_?” Tony demands, even though he can clearly see it is. “Wow. That thing’s older than _you_ are, what even is—I know I stocked this place with a French Press.”

“You mean this?” Bucky asks, holding up the coffeemaker. It makes roughly four cups of coffee in one go, as opposed to the percolator, which makes 42.

“Fair point,” Tony says.

He sets the tv to CNN, declaring it the least biased network. Jarvis keeps a running count for them in the bottom right corner of all the nations in the world that have offered clemency, in one form or another. 116 of them.

And then they cut to the White House. The Oval Office. Steve, who’d been in the middle of eating his twelfth pancake, drops his fork and squeeze’s Bucky’s had so hard the metal plates creak.

“Good morning,” the president says. “I’m sure at least some of you suspect that I’m here to speak to you about Sergeant Major Jamesina Rogers. I’m not. Not really. What I do want to discuss is America, and the American justice system.

“Now, I am a big believer in our justice system, and the rule of law we’ve created. American justice, at its best, is fair and rational. It relies on educated attorneys who zealously defend the interests of their clients, whether those clients are mass-murderers, tortured P.O.W.s, or the American People, who demand, and deserve, that the right people be held accountable for the right crimes, so that a just and safe society can continue to flourish. It depends too on the firm, compassionate guidance of an unbiased judge, who can ensure the law is properly enacted. And most important of all, it depends on you. The People. It depends on regular, everyday citizens who exercise their civic duty and good judgment to determine whether or not a defendant should be held legally responsible for the crimes they have been accused of. I love this system. When everything works properly, it is a beautiful system, and no finer one has yet been devised.

“When everything works properly.

“The problem is, everything doesn’t always go right. Emotions can cloud good judgment. Grief and anger can lead the most zealous attorney, the most careful judge, the most civic-minded citizen, into making the wrong choices. When someone’s entire life is on the line, that is a heavy price to pay.

“Now, you may be asking yourself, so what? Isn’t that part of our justice system, the system I just described as the finest on earth?

“Sometimes. Most times. But when 116 nations, one after another, band together to say ‘this is not right. This is not just. This should not be,’ it is incumbent upon us to listen. 116 members of the United Nations have declared that Sergeant Major Jamesina Buchanan Rogers, the longest-serving P.O.W. in history, has been subjected to enough torture, enough punishment, enough _justice_ , to satisfy any court of law. 116 nations have said she is not legally, morally, or factually responsible for any actions taken while she was a prisoner of Hydra.

“I took an oath of office eight years ago, and again four years ago, to uphold to the best of my abilities the laws and the Constitution of these United States of America. And now, by the rights that oath and your votes gave to me as President, I am exercising my executive power of pardon.”

The president picks up his pen, signs a piece of paper, and looks back at the camera. “Sergeant Major,” he says, “it is now 117. You are hereby pardoned by the United States of America. Welcome home.”

* * *

Tony throws a party to celebrate what he calls “the most astounding display of common sense ever shown by so many politicians in the entire history of mankind.”

Tony’s laying it on a little thick; one of the things dredged up at the trial was the murder of his parents, after which he’d disappeared for a day and a half before coming back to court in dark sunglasses and pointedly ignoring the prosecutors. In another world, a world where she never fell and Steve never dove his stupid plane into the stupid ocean, Tony would’ve been, could’ve been, her nephew. Climbing into her lap for stories and getting taken to pictures and opening packages of baked goods and handwritten letters when away at school. Instead, she strangled his mother with one hand and he’s paid for most of her legal defenses. Bucky doesn’t really want a party, but she also doesn’t want to tell Tony no about pretty much anything right now.

And it turns out Tony’s actually capable of a fair amount of discretion. He did successfully run a Fortune 500 company for nearly 20 years, this shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s hard to remember sometimes that he’s only flamboyant when it suits him, and is as discerning as he is intelligent. Tony’s problem has never been that he doesn’t care enough.

So he throws a party, and it’s small and discreet. No reporters, or movie stars, or politicians. Just the Avengers, Bucky’s family, and her character witnesses.

She starts crying again as soon as she sees them.

“And what have you got to cry about, Sarge?” Dum-Dum folds her gently into his arms. “Look at her, Gabe. Not a day older and a fair sight prettier ‘n Old Cap there, isn’t she?”

“You’ll get no arguments from me,” Steve says. “Though if you want to talk about the ugliest mugs in the army—”

“Don’t you go picking on poor Jaques when he’s not around to defend himself,” Bucky scolds. Her voice is half-muffled because her face is still pressed to Dum-Dum’s shoulder.

“May he rest in peace,” Gabe says. “Here, Dugan you derby-headed idiot, quit hogging all the pretty ladies.”

Bucky turns and hugs him, even more careful as she kneels and fits herself around his wheelchair. “Didn’t you get enough pretty girls, dancing with all those Brits in the bomb shelters? Never did see such a tomcat in all my life, Gabe Jones.”

Dum-Dum cackles. Gabe just smiles and says she’s starting to sound like _their_ Bucky now. Then he spots Pat, leaning on Big Jamie’s arm. “Monkeyboy!” he grouses, pointing at Tony who turns bright red (and Bucky makes a mental note to get that story later), “What’d you invite the whippersnapper for? What a trial getting that kid safe through Korea, let me tell you. Always sticking his nose into the most dangerous places he could just because ‘someone might want him.’ If we wanted priests on the front lines, sonny boy, we wouldn’t have assigned you to a M.A.S.H. unit.”

“You didn’t assign me anywhere, you old fogey,” Pat retors. “Just kept popping up like a bad penny every time I had the chance to really help anyone. If the army had wanted your input on where I should serve, they wouldn’t have left you a corporal. A _corporal _! I was a _captain_ —”__

“A courtesy rank and—”

“How’s about you quit pawing at my sister before Steve here has to deck you?”

“Don’t look at me,” Steve says. “If Buck wants me to defend her, she’ll have to make an honest man of me first. And even then, she’d probably just defend herself. I haven’t gotten to beat anyone up for her since I convinced her to ditch Billy Wagner when I was twelve years old and let me take her to the talkies instead. Best bloody nose of my life.” 

"You never told me that.”

“Contrary to popular opinion, sweetheart, I am not, in fact, an idiot.”

Bucky forbears to comment, mostly because Tony and Clint jump in wanting to know all about this “talkies” business. Even Pat cackles at the old farts who remember a time before movies had sound, although possibly because he apparently has forged a deep and lasting relationship based entirely on grumpily swatting at Dum-Dum and Gabe.

“Hey.” Steve finds her when things are winding down, between the older folks getting tired early and the younger ones having a baby to care for.

Hey yourself,” Bucky says, nudging him.

“Come up on the roof with me?”

The view is beautiful, but Bucky hardly takes it in. She knows what’s coming; has done since the first time Steve got kicked out of a meeting with Bucky’s attorneys. It’s okay. The first thing she did after getting pardoned was sneak Natasha’s gun back.

“I love you,” Steve says, bending down on one knee.

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Yes.”

“What?”

“My answer—”

“I haven’t even asked the question yet.”

“And I’m telling you yes,” Bucky says.

Steve throws his hands up. “Goddamnit, Buck, couldn’t you let me get one full proposal out for once in my life?”

“You were about to give yourself an asthma attack last time—”

“ _Last_ time. You didn’t even let me get to the ring part this time!”

Bucky rolls her eyes. “Go on then.”

It’s beautiful. It’s nothing like her first ring, not really, but Steve never was happy with that paltry diamond, bought at a time when diamonds were cheap and—it’s a sapphire, a brilliant deep blue that matches her eyes, and in two little triangles on either side are a six diamonds, which Pat tells her later were from a necklace Dad gave Ma for their fiftieth anniversary. “Steve.”

“I love you,” Steve says. “I’ve loved you since the moment I met you, Buck. Haven’t ever tried not to. I tried to at least move on for awhile there, to put my grief aside and keep living, but without you there was no purpose in any of it. No joy. No color. Without you, I can’t be happy. And I think—I hope—I make you happy too. God knows I’ll try my best to. I love you, Bucky. With everything I am, for as long as I live. Till the end of the line, I love you. So please, please sweetheart, marry me again?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, and hurls herself at him.

Steve catch her, and doesn’t let go.


End file.
